James Corden

Horne & Corden Aren't Speaking

Mat Horne and James Corden have stopped speaking and have no plans to work together again.

If you missed season three of this ever-wonderful family sitcom, you can catch the entire run tonight. Some of the dynamics of the show are changing: Nessa (Ruth Jones) seems less amenable, Mick (Larry Lamb) a little spikier (shades of his EastEnders character?) and Bryn (Rob Brydon) even stranger, but it remains sweet-natured. As the final series opens, Gavin (Mathew Horne) has started a new job in Cardiff so Stacey (Joanna Page) is back at home in Barry and a christening is being planned for baby Neil, but there's a shock in store for his father, Smithy (James Corden).

The final episode of Gavin and Stacey saw lovesick Smithy interrupt Nessa's wedding to Dave Coaches with a speech so poignant, funny and beautifully delivered that you could almost forgive writer/star James Corden for Horne & Corden. Almost, but not quite.

According to co-writers Ruth Jones and James Corden, this is the show's last ever episode, and the series ends, as all self-respecting feelgood comedy dramas should, with a wedding, a big revelation and a semi-ironic blast of Angry Anderson's Suddenly. Controversially, the BBC has already released the DVD of this third series, so you may already know that John Prescott makes a brief cameo, and that Nessa (Jones) is towed to the church in a trailer attached to the back of her father's brown Mini Metro. But if not: enjoy.

We'd better start the petition now. If tonight is truly to be the last-ever Gavin & Stacey, there will be much wailing and rending of garments on the sofas of Britain. Sitcoms this complete don't come along every day. For my money, G&S assembled the finest group of believably, lovably mad characters in one cast since Walmington-on-Sea's Home Guard last lined up. Amid the scene-stealing eccentrics, it's easy to overlook how good James Corden is as Smithy. Throughout the series he has been great in those awkward moments with Nessa. He's mostly hovered on the sidelines, but tonight his moment may have come. We start on the eve of Nessa and Dave's wedding. "How many times do you get married in this life?" she wonders aloud. "Twice? Three times? I want to do it in style." And as we know, Nessa's idea of style is an ocean away from anyone else's - not so much meringue as Viking princess. What unfolds is as poignant and sharp as you'd expect, albeit with an ending that feels awfully final. Come on chaps: what price a Christmas special next year?

It's Nessa and Dave's wedding, an event every fan will be wishing doesn't happen. We all know she's supposed to end up with Smithy. So does he. The moment he meets Nessa to collect baby Neil and just can't bring himself to reveal his feelings is heart breaking. As she heads up back the motorway for her big day you want to shout at the telly: "Go after her, you big buffoon!"

But leave it a bit, alright? We've got to see TV's most unlikely bride do the walking down the aisle bit first. Nessa wants her big day to be done in style - but this is Nessa's style, so she looks more like Boudicca than a meringue.

The episode, in case you've been living under a rock, is the last-ever one (unless I get my wish and the careers of Ruth Jones and James Corden go belly up and they're so desperate they're forced to write more).

And it's faultless, with the superb choice of music including the same tearjerker that Scott and Charlene walked down the aisle to in Neighbours and You've Got The Love, used in the Sex & The City finale. So will Nessa get Gavin & Stacey's answer to Mr Big? Or, heaven forbid, will she clap eyes on ex-lover John Prescott (who cameos) and run off with him instead?

James Corden and Mathew Horne film is turkey of 09

Comedy duo Mathew Horne and James Corden's Lesbian Vampire Killers film has been voted 2009's biggest flop.

One of the sweet things about this series is how conventional Gavin and Stacey actually are. Last week, they decided to try for a baby, so by golly this week, that's what they're going to do - even if their friends and family keep getting in the way.

Just the simple act of ordering an Indian takeaway - as the Shipmans are trying to do tonight - can turn into a three-ring circus with this lot. They're not so much a family, as a herd, constantly migrating from one end of the M4 to the other.

While Nessa and Bryn steal the show again, this week with a fortune-telling business and a job interview respectively, tonight's other YouTube-worthy highlight sees Smithy and Rudi duetting on American Boy. You would be looking at James Corden a long time before you spotted any similarity between him and Kanye West but this duo should consider joining Pam on her Britain's Got Talent quest. And expect one more big development before the night is out.

How did they know the number? Within 11 minutes of Gavin settling into his new office in Wales, his family and friends were all ringing him on his work phone to find out how he was doing. Did he send them a text containing his extension - before he even knew how to work his office phone? Was it a round-robin e-mail? I mean, we all do it before starting a new job - send our family and friends the number. Or perhaps they looked up the switchboard number of the firm in the Yellow Pages and called there. I mean, there's no way they'd use his mobile phone number. The cost of calling some networks can be prohibitive.

Obviously, this was part joke/part characterisation. They're worried about him! They're making things worse! And really, it shouldn't be over-analysed because at least it was a joke, even if it didn't work. We should be grateful for its presence because Gavin And Stacey doesn't usually bother with jokes. As every newspaper will tell you, Gavin And Stacey is warm. (Warm is defined as 'a mawkish soap-opera similar in style to late series of Only Fools And Horses'.)

It's true that the rest of the show was searingly original - a swearing granny, the robot dance, Sheridan Smith as a young ******* and James Corden's heroic attempt to maintain his position as the most punchable face on television.

By tvBite's reckoning, there were three and a half jokes in the first episode. None of them were funny. None of them worked on their own terms (Gavin's phone number, how did Nessa only hear her baby through a monitor when it was on the other side of the bed?).

Still, there are unbelievable things that happen in real life. Who'd laugh at a show with no jokes, patronising characters (Yes, they ARE. Look at Pam Ferris and Nessa's fiance) and James Corden? What kind of world would shower this show with awards and claim it was well-written? It's total fantasy.

For all its BAFTAs, series three of Gavin & Stacey was about as fresh or contemporary as Some Mothers Do 'Ave 'Em. Sadly, it's all become a bit twee and stagey.

It began with Gavin starting his first day at work - an occasion that necessitated every other character to ring him up. "Hiya it's me, it's Stacey," announced Stacey - the Betty Spencer of the piece. "I know," grinned Gav, virtually rolling his eyes to camera. Mugging furiously, Rob Brydon (Bryn) even turned up to bring him a packed lunch!

James Corden meanwhile went into squealing pig mode, over-acting his socks off.
"I don't know who he is anymore! He's changed!" Smithy moaned preposterously. With Gavin & Stacey reduced to caricatures, this series should be called Dave & Ness who remained a masterclass in understatement. The baby was christened "Neil Noel Edmond Smith." The days when the vicar is due and the turkey isn't defrosted can't be far away.