Gavin and Stacey creators Ruth Jones and James Corden have revealed the sitcoms much-loved characters will return in a new form next year.
Gavin And Stacey: The Finale will air on Christmas Day on the BBC and it will be the show’s final episode following 2019’s festive special which ended on a cliff-hanger when Vanessa ‘Nessa’ Jenkins, played by Ruth, proposed to James' character Neil ‘Smithy’ Smith.
But the story doesn't end there! Ruth and James have announced that they are writing a new book together, titled When Gavin Met Stacey and Everything in Between: A Story Of Love And Friendship. The pair's literary offering with hit book shops in Autumn 2025 and will detail their journey to creating a comedy that touched the hearts of a nations.
Speaking in the wake of the book deal being announced, Ruth, 48, and James, 46, told fans: "We're so excited to be sharing the story behind the story of Gavin and Stacey. The show has played a huge part in our twenty-five-year friendship and we hope this book will give readers a fresh insight into how it all came about."
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PA)"Gavin and Stacey is a TV series like no other. Now, for the first time, its creators James Corden and Ruth Jones tell the full extraordinary story of how they turned their little show into a full-on cultural phenomenon," the book's publisher Penguin added in its description of the upcoming book.
"As they recount the rejection, obstacles and challenges they faced on the way to giving birth to their beloved comedy creation, James and Ruth also explore the flourishing of their own real-life friendship. While their now legendary on- screen characters Nessa and Smithy had a profound awkwardness to negotiate, culminating in that marriage proposal in the 2019 Christmas special, Ruth and James forged a magical relationship of mutual support based also on a deep, shared sense of subversive fun.
"Here, from their tentative initial pitch to the emotionally overwhelming final day of filming, the duo detail what’s occurred every step of the way, bouncing off each other in inimitable style. Full of revelations and never-before-heard stories, this is a one-of-a-kind book about a show that’s already gone down in history."
The book announcement comes in the wake of James admitting he "never ever thought" Gavin and Stacey would be a long-running show and that its success had been "a dream come true". The 46-year-old added that just having a show that is "worthy of a Christmas special" was enough for him and that he thought ending at three series was the right decision.
Speaking at a screening in London earlier this week ahead of the Christmas Day episode airing, the Smithy actor said: "We’ve honestly never ever thought past what we’ve been commissioned to do, when we were writing the scripts for the first series, we didn’t know if the show would get green lit.
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PA)"Then it gets green lit, then you shoot it, and then you’re hoping that someone finds it, then you get to do another series. And then suddenly, as that one starts coming out, it feels like lots of people are watching it. And then we did the first Christmas special, which was just a dream come true for us, like an absolute dream come true, to have a show that was considered worthy of a Christmas special, that was enough for us is the truth.
"And then we really felt like we probably told enough of the story, and if we’re honest with ourselves, we were finding it hard to construct ways for the families to keep meeting up… And so I think when we ended the third series, it was definite that was it."
He explained that a finale episode was not certain and there was a chance that he and co-writer Ruth would leave the show at its cliff-hanger ending. James added: "We had a week in September, where we were like let’s get together then, and if there’s nothing there, if the characters don’t show us what the story is, it doesn’t matter.
"We haven’t told anybody, we haven’t told the cast, we haven’t spoken to the BBC, and it’s kind of lovely hearing Charlotte (Moore, the BBC’s Chief Content Officer) talk about those moments. We didn’t contact Charlotte till we’ve written, I think 70 pages of this special, because by then we felt like, ‘oh, we’ve got something that we feel that we’re ready to share’. Because it may sound like a complete nonsense but it doesn’t really feel like we’re in charge of writing, I feel like we just have to be together, and we sort of open a portal and the characters arrive, and they tell us what they want everybody to know.”
*Gavin And Stacey: The Finale will air on BBC One from 9pm on Christmas Day and will also be available on BBC iPlayer. The documentary Gavin And Stacey: A Fond Farewell will be shown at 7pm on New Year’s Day on BBC One and BBC iPlayer.
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