Gavin & Stacey

The BBC's hit comedy Gavin & Stacey was back with its winning formula of gooey romance, slapstick angst and recurring logistical challenge of getting a vast ensemble of Essex and Welsh people into the same room without it seeming odd. Perhaps that's its genius. This week they solved it with a christening party, adding yet more characters. Here was Nessa's dad and Smithy's mother (Pam Ferris, looking like she'd slept in a skip), and Ewan Kennedy was cracking as the new baby, Neil - strapped facing outwards on Nessa's back. "That's so I can smoke," she drawled.

The Welsh steal this show, led by Ruth Jones as Nessa - gnomic, brusque, experienced - alongside her spiritual opposite, Bryn (Rob Brydon), garrulous, sentimental and unworldly. I don't know about the Billericay element. Alison Steadman is a bit of a pantomime grotesque as Gavin's mum, and Smithy's Byronic laments for Gav - now installed in his new job in Cardiff - are fast losing their charm. I'm all in favour of a man expressing his feelings but if Smithy were my best mate I think I'd have to move farther than Wales.

Gavin & Stacey are back for what they say will be the final series of this immensely well-written and properly amusing sitcom. The unamusing truth about comedies is that they generally die half a dozen episodes before keeling over, and Gavin & Stacey is a dead sitcom walking. Everybody has that distracted look of actors in the middle of contract negotiations, talking to their agent between takes.

This series has made a handful of them stars, but the drive and the energy are dissipated. In place of sharp observation and dialogue based on a handful of cleverly defined and delivered characters, we're left with lazy ciphers who have fallen heavily back on the sofa of cliché and the scatter cushions of repetition. The easy yuk-yuks are predictable. Nobody means it any more or even really cares. Nobody's listening.

This doesn't detract from the brilliance of the original scripts and production, but it is a salutary example of how slight is the distance between brilliance and mediocrity. Television is such an intimate medium that it can't paper its cracks with special effects or money. It relies on the belief and commitment of performers. The audience can instinctively tell when they've lost concen­tration, when it's being phoned in. So it's interesting to see Gavin & Stacey, the third series - interesting, but not very funny.

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.

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Gavin and Stacey are a warm bath with razor blades

Contrary to the general opinion, there are plenty of sharp corners to this comedy's comfy, plushly upholstered format.

Gavin & Stacey (BBC1) are back for a third and, we are told, final series. But we won't dwell on that because the thought of television schedules bereft of this last tiny bastion of warmth, wit and occasional tiny oubliettes full of wisdom is one I cannot hold for long without tears starting to brim.

It is Gavin's first day at his new job, now that he and Stacey have moved back to Barry. He is trying to present a professional front to his boss while fielding the vast array of phone calls, presents and sandwiches that are the unsought side-effects of close family relations.

I still can't see how anyone can be even tangentially involved with, never mind married to, Stacey without large doses of drugs and/or therapy, but Nessa continues to draw the sting of her presence with her own magnificently disaffected progress through life. She has strapped baby Neil to her back so that he no longer impedes her smoking. She has delegated all the cooking for his christening to Gwen, and is planning to spend the remainder of the £6,000 Doris lent her on vaginal rejuvenation. Oh, and the christening do is doubling as an engagement party for her and Dave: a discovery that naturally pains Neil's dad, Smithy, and not just because he stumped up 400 quid for costs before she told him. Is there a flicker of yearning behind Nessa's eyes as Smithy takes the baby for a photo, portending a happy ending for these two kebab-crossed lovers? Or has she just realised that she's left a packet of fags in his nappy?

In the closing scenes, Stacey and Gavin decide that they will start trying for a baby. I wouldn't trust Stacey with an uncapped Biro myself, but who listens to me?

Gavin & Stacey: series three, episode one

Gavin is feeling homesick in Cardiff as the clan get set to reunite for the christening of baby Neil.

Gavin & Stacey, BBC One, review

Michael Hogan reviews the return of the popular Anglo-Welsh sitcom Gavin & Stacey.

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.

Video: I live in Stacey's house

Barry resident Glenda Keynon has welcomed hundreds of Gavin and Stacey fans into her living room since the popular sitcom show began.