"Gavin & Stacey": Catch BBC America's Latest, Sweetest Sitcom before It Gets the NBC Makeover

By Elaine Liner Archives
Cover image for  article: "Gavin & Stacey": Catch BBC America's Latest, Sweetest Sitcom before It Gets the NBC Makeover

NBC already has snagged the rights to “format” the award-winning BBC sitcom Gavin & Stacey. But before the peacock pecks it to pieces, you can watch the original, which just had its American premiere on cable’s BBC America. The half-hour comedy is on at 8:40 p.m. ET Tuesdays, with episode No. 2 running tonight (Sept. 2). (Catch the first episode via cable on-demand and TiVo.)

 

Created and written by comedians Ruth Jones and James Corden, the show follows the title couple, played by the winsome Joanna Page and the just-handsome-enough Mathew Horne. For six months Gavin and Stacey have flirted by phone from their desks at work. She’s in Wales; he’s in Essex. When they finally arrange a date in London, it’s fireworks and happy bells as they fall in love at first sight.

 

Not so true for the pals they’ve dragged along for the date: chubby Smithy (Corden) and voluptuously aggressive Nessa (Jones). First they share slices of pizza, then Smithy and Nessa share a dozen shots and then a wild rendezvous in the toilet of a hotel room. (Audible but, thank goodness, not visible on TV.)

 

There’s something original, endearing and very relatable about this show. It’s not as cloyingly punchline-heavy as Friends or as openly smutty as Sex & the City. But it does have something to say to fans of those now-defunct comedies. And most of what it’s saying is that love is messy and wonderful for the couple in the romance, and not quite so exciting for everyone around them. Gavin & Stacey explores what happens when groups of completely disparate people come together solely because someone on each side of the equation is in a new relationship.

 

The title characters are refreshingly ordinary. They wear cheap cardigans and bad haircuts (Stacey’s always looks like her blonde locks got caught in a ceiling fan). How un-glam, how un-Gossip Girl, un-Hills.

 

Each episode, sans laugh track (thank you!), whips by in a blur of heavily-accented conversations (that Welsh brogue takes some getting used to). And with each week, we’ll see more and more of the colliding worlds of the loving couple. Already Gavin’s mom, played by Alison Steadman, is a standout. When her husband teases her about going on the Atkins diet, she begs him not to share the info with his golf pals. “They’ll tell their wives and before long I’ll be known as Three Steaks Pamela!” she moans.

 

And watch for Smithy and Nessa to hook up again, no matter how much they insist they’re not attracted to each other. With enough shots from the bar, even they might be ready for a heady shot at love.

 
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