Ruth Jones (I)

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With a third series already limbering up, there are bound to be plenty of cliff-hangers tonight as the warm-hearted Pontyberry delight written by and starring Ruth Jones bows out with a double-episode finale. With the good - and not so good - folk of the town still picking up the pieces of their lives after the blistering bust-ups of Fight Night, the focus is on the future. Will Emma forgive Sunil? Is the final nail in the coffin for Paula now Dai's declared he wants a divorce? Will Big Al ever win at anything? And, with Rob poised to push off once more, what will become of Stella? There will be tears...

Ruth Jones's small-town saga has lost none of its charm or wit in this second series - and it's repeated the trick of building up stories that run seamlessly from episode to episode. Tonight's double bill finishes off the current run.

The central tale is the love life of Stella (Jones herself), which predictably is complicated by something unpredictable, but Emma and Sunil are hitting crisis point too. Series three is on the way, so the story - happily - doesn't end here.

Ruth Jones's soft-centred drama enjoys a pugilistic diversion tonight as Steve Speirs takes the writing credit for an episode that puts Big Alan in the centre of the action. While Stella feels like boxing Rob's ears for letting son Luke loose in the ring at Pontyberry's fight night, Big Alan is girding his loins for a life-changing battle on two fronts: the custody of Little Alan and the future of his precious rugby club.

Fight night in Pontyberry. Not just hotheads Luke and Lenny clashing in the ring over Zoe, but Big Alan squaring up for a scrap over his beloved rugby club. We know there's a rousing, Churchillian speech in the offing, and it's well worth the wait. It's an Alan-heavy episode, and that's no surprise: Steve Speirs, who plays him so brilliantly, is also this week's writer.

But that's the great thing about Stella star and creator Ruth Jones, who distributes plotlines among her ensemble cast with equanimity. And it works perfectly for the cheek-by-jowl world of Pontyberry, where everyone knows everyone's else's business: look out for an unsuitable choir rehearsal in the room above the undertaker's.

Ruth Jones's poignant, charmingly observed Welsh Valleys comedy drama continues. Tonight sees a search organised for Dai (Owen Teale), while his estranged wife Paula (Elizabeth Berrington) deals with the issue in a more proactive way - by expressing her feelings at the Got to Dance auditions in front of Ashley Banjo (a shameless bit of Sky1 self promotion). Elsewhere, Bobby (Aled Pugh) conducts his first solo funeral but there's a problem when two families arrive at the cemetery and find only one burial plot.

Fact hip hops around fiction and back again as Diversity's Ashley Banjo brings Sky1's talent show Got To Dance to the streets of Pontyberry. With the carrot of a cash pot big enough to save Big Alan's rugby club, the show tempts Little Alan to step up and shake his booty. Which is what the grown-ups are doing at their 1980s-themed fancy dress school reunion - a nostalgic trip which revives first-love memories for Stella (Ruth Jones) and Rob.

It's school reunion time in Pontyberry, an 80s-themed event that cannily flavours all this week's events with just the right tone. One of the many girls with whom Stella (Ruth Jones) feuded is back, dressed as Krystle Carrington when almost everyone else is a pop star. These snobs always come a cropper.

The fancy dress theme achieves the trademark Stella trick of tempering emotion with laughs: Dai hits a new low as his marriage to Paula fails to fix itself, but he's dressed as Adam Ant throughout so it doesn't seem so bad. Most importantly, a reunion is about longing for the past. The romance that never died between open-hearted Stella and manly, serene Rob (Mark Lewis Jones) warms up again.