James Corden

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.

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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.

All the same, I was interested to see whether the gentle BBC series, which returned last week for a third and final series, would have shed a little fairy dust in the aftermath of the lamentable solo efforts of James Corden and Mathew Horne. It didn't take long, however, to be reminded that neither actor has ever been a main draw among the superlative cast (though credit goes to Corden as co-writer). The action has shifted to Barry Island, which will please fans of Ruth Jones's brilliantly deadpan Nessa and Rob Brydon's Uncle Bryn - a caricature, but an excellent one.

The christening of Nessa and Smithy's son provides the excuse to lure the Essex contingent over the border, and the seeds are planted early for what promises to be a warm and fuzzy finale. No surprises perhaps, but for the home straight, I'm perfectly happy with more of the same.

Their sketch show was an obnoxious, homophobic mess, so it's probably wise that Mathew Horne and James Corden have returned in the show that first made them popular, Gavin & Stacey. The first episode of this final series was like a warm bath: slightly eccentric characters, love and empathy bubbling around the intertwined lives of three families. Gavin has moved to Wales to work and live with Stacey and was bored. His first day at work was littered with grating, if sweet, interventions - balloons, phone messages, a packed lunch from Rob Brydon's Uncle Bryn - which delighted his new, and yes kooky, colleagues.

You can see why Gavin & Stacey is universally loved: the dialogue is carefully colloquial, everyone has their turn, it affirms family and friendship, has a dark edge - but for this viewer there is a sense of old tricks being recycled. Everyone's quirks ("What's occurrin'?") are so well-worn they have lost their magic.

The only distinctive performances are Ruth Jones's monotone Nessa, with baby (who is with her though concealed at all times) and the marvellous, foul-mouthed Doris/Dor (Margaret John) who stuck two fingers up at the expectation that she'd make salad for the christening party. You should root for Corden's Smithy, father of Nessa's baby and trying to find a role for himself now his best friend has moved away and the mother of his child is with a new partner, but he's supremely irritating and unfunny.

Legend has it James Corden and Ruth Jones thought long and hard about the whys and wherefores and the what's occurrings involved in a third series of Gavin & Stacey (BBC1). As it stood, they had two perfectly formed series and one special, so cult status was assured. Stretch it out and the danger was it could all go a bit My Family. So it was a relief to find that, at least in parts, the charms of G&S - not just a sitcom, but an Anglo-Welsh melange of social integration, drizzled with dollops of juicy profanity - were still cooking with gas. With Gavin relocated to Wales for work, there was scope for surreal culture shock.

When a new colleague introduced himself with the words: 'My name is Owain Hughes. And before you ask, no I don't,' you shared his fish-out-ofwater befuddlement - unless you were Uncle Bryn, in which case you found it hilarious. It must be a Welsh thing. The story picked up with the christening of Nessa and Smithy's baby, an ideal excuse to throw the two halves of the G&S extended family together. And that was where the niggles started: when you wanted to get reacquainted with the principal players, the focus kept shifting to a ragbag of minor characters who were little more than sitcom sketches. Bringing in Nessa's dad and Smithy's mum (Pam Ferris) over-egged a pudding already threatening to collapse under the weight of its wacky ingredients. The best of Gavin & Stacey is in the little details, the laugh or cry moments. But at times here, the comedy was drawn with a broader brush, built around a succession of conventions written in the sitcom rulebook. Funny, es, but more like a succession of g ags and comedy observations than the flesh and blood reality it felt like before. Which inspired mixed feelings - it's undoubtedly good to have Gavin & Stacey back but, on this evidence, it's going to be a little easier to say hello and wave goodbye than you might have thought.

I can see why people like Gavin & Stacey, I really can. It's warm. It's cuddly. It's the celluloid equivalent of on a mug of tea and a slab of Dairy Milk. And it really is all of those things - Joanna Page, who plays Stacey is cute as a button, just Bridget-Jonesy enough for us empathise with, the type of lass any well-brought-up young girl would want to be friends with. And Mat Horne (Gavin) is, for want of a better word, fit. In a safe way. And well dressed, with the not-at-all-bad-looking Page as his girlfriend, so mothers like him and men have a degree of grudging respect for him. And then there's James Corden, who plays Gavin's best mate, Smithy, and everyone knows that James Corden's lovely. So yes: as Bob Hope would say, what's not to like?

Except, erm, I'm afraid I don't. Like it, that is. I like Ruth Jones, aka the indomitable Nessa, fag-smoking, drink-swilling best friend of - inexplicably - Stacey. But that's all. At least Nessa's funny, a quality which, it's worth pointing out, is rather useful when it comes to a comedy show. But apart from her, I can't fathom one of them. Not even Bryn, played with aplomb by Rob Brydon. He's too nice. Far, far too nice. They all are. The whole thing is. It's so nice, you cease to care. It becomes... elevator music.

But anyway, what do I know? Clearly, nothing. Seven million people watched the Christmas special last year, and seven million can't be wrong. Can they? Anyway, last night was the start of the third (and last) series, which saw Gavin settling into his new job in Barry, while the Essex crowd geared up for the christening of Smithy and Nessa's baby, named - wait for it - Neil Noel Edmond Smith. One of the few laugh-out loud jokes of the episode. Any Gavin & Stacey fan would have been thrilled, I'm sure. All the usual bumf was there: Stacey freaking out over an article she's read in Psychologies magazine, Bryn popping his head through Gavin's office window, Smithy ordering enough food for an entire army. Me? Well, like I said. Elevator music. Pleasant enough, no plans to buy the album.

We like James Corden a lot more when he's putting his talents to this Bafta-winning series rather than letting his ego run riot on other formats. It's the christening of Nessa and Smithy's baby that warrants the bringing together of the Essex and Welsh families in this first episode of the final series. Of second concern is jobs: Nessa's got two, Smithy and Stacey don't have any and Gavin's got a new one at which he's thoroughly embarrassed after family and friends bombard him with impromptu visits, phone calls, packed lunches and other well-wishing surprises.