James Corden and Ruth Jones have opened up about just how in sync they were when it came to writing the finale of Gavin & Stacey.
Five years on from 2019’s festive cliffhanger, the award-winning sitcom will air one final feature-length episode on Christmas Day, which both James and Ruth have insisted will be the last instalment of the show.
The pair – who also play Smithy and Nessa in the BBC sitcom, as well as co-writing it – first got together to start the creative process over the summer of 2023.
“We both had the same idea, didn’t we?” Ruth said to her co-creator at a screening of the episode in London on Wednesday.
Per Sky News, James said: “It may sound like complete nonsense [but] it doesn’t really feel like we’re in charge of writing it.
“I feel like we just have to be together, and we sort of open a portal and the characters arrive and tell us.”
Ruth added: “Our cast just inhabit those roles. I think it’s been very much a joint venture, in more ways than one.”
Elsewhere during the Q&A, James spoke about how the success of Gavin & Stacey is something of a “lesson in patience” for the TV industry.
“We’re sort of told now, particularly in television, or the way we consume stuff – we talk about content and we talk about consumers and we talk about speed,” he said. “Here’s a show that ended 15 years ago, waited 10 years to tell another hour of the story, and waited five more years to end it.
“Maybe the lesson for all of us – for people that write about television, for people that talk about television, for people that write television – is actually, maybe, time and patience and care might be the answer for things to have a longevity outside of what we consume on our phones.”
So far, specific plot points from the Gavin & Stacey finale are being kept under wraps, but it looks like we might finally have an answer as to what happened after that gripping final scene in the 2019 special.
Meanwhile, first-look images from the episode have teased the return of an unexpected familiar face.
