Gavin and Stacey: An Exclusive Tour of the Finale Set

“It can’t go on after that,” explains James Corden. “It just can’t.”

Standing outside his mobile dressing room in a car park on the outskirts of Cardiff, the Gavin & Stacey co-creator explains why the sitcom is ending after 17 years.

“Look, obviously there’s a lot of things we can’t talk about. But on Christmas Day, that’ll be the last time we see all these characters together.”

He insists it’s “not up for discussion” and that the show, which he co-wrote and also stars in as Smithy, won’t be happening again, to use the show’s specific language.

“There are things going on in this particular that really, really tell us that this is going to happen. We just can’t see any way it could go on. So that’s the reason to end it now.”

From 21:00 on Christmas Day across the country, the much-loved show will be wrapped in wrapping paper.

It’s just after 8 a.m. on a gray October morning. BBC News has been invited to spend a day watching one of the last days of filming Gavin & Stacey for a half-hour iPlayer special.

Our first stop is the makeup trick, where Ruth Jones, Nessa, on the show, gets a Welsh dragon tattooed on her arm.

“Girls are always ahead of boys,” she laughs.

“James Corden’s in for five or six minutes at most. I’m in for an hour and a quarter. But the results speak for themselves,” she says, “and they miss out on really, really nasty, disgusting gossip. Lives.”

With a mirror, Joanna Page is being transformed into Stacey, though listening to her conversations with the crew, she is much more than Stacey to begin with.

Her topics for this morning’s session included Christmas decorations, the changing of the seasons (“a great subject”) and ear piercings (“At the end of filming I’m going to do one more mark that’s all done.” “).

James Corden gets to use beard trimmings and perhaps inadvertently gives away one of the show’s more telling little nuggets, when he explains that his stubble must stay at this length: “Because it’s just over four days.”

Rob Brydon, already dressed in Uncle Brian’s best brown party clothes, is mercilessly teased when he arrives. The cast are going out for a team curry that evening and it’s decided that they should pay it forward after managing to host a corporate event and squeeze in a voice-over gig during yesterday’s filming.

He pulls a face that won’t happen, before saying that his biggest worry is when the dinner will be over due to an early start on set.

Soon he had the whole room laughing with his impressions of Ronnie Corbett’s make-up.

They are clearly a cast that loves to spend time with each other even in the wee hours of the morning.

Jones has returned to her trailer. When I pass five minutes later, she’s standing in the doorway holding a plate, which she tilts at me: “See we eat omelettes on this show,” she laughs, “even though Gwen didn’t make them.”

After a short minibus ride to the commuter village of Dinas Powys, the cast arrives at a very familiar detached house, in the wrong part of the country.

For 17 years, it has been where Pam and Mick’s scenes have been filmed, doubling for Essex, along with the Vale of Glamorgan.

Tents are set up outside the garage to provide room for all equipment and monitors.

We watch as a party scene involving a limbo dance is filmed from every angle, as Brian downs the shots and Nessa gives Smithy a lesson in eating tzatziki, a Greek yogurt dish. (“Don’t use crackers. Use bread.”)

What is not clear, however, is how this follows from the cliffhanger proposition at the end of the 2019 Christmas special, which was watched by 18.5 million people, more than a quarter of the UK population.

“Well, I can tell you if it’s not set at Christmas,” shares James Corden, who explains that there’s already been a Christmas Day special set in Barry and one in Essex. This concept has been completed.

“I can tell you it’s set after this moment. There’s no time, we’re not going back in time,” he adds.

Sitting between the monitor and the director’s chair, Jones explained one big change: “It’s 90 minutes. And all the characters have their own little story in there, which is beautiful. Because if you’re a fan of a show, So you like all the shows characters

“It’s like, I loved the Wombles when I was little and I’d love any story about one of the Wombles.”

However, Corden refutes the idea that length now means it’s a movie. “I don’t want to say it’s a movie because I think it has expectations and I’m not sure our show can ever reach that.”

Sitting on a sofa left over from the first series, actress Alison Steadman is relishing returning to Palm’s domain, but says she’s “really, really scared” on the last day of filming.

“It’s been a lot of fun over the last 17 years,” she says. “People love her and stop me from talking about her all the time. I love Pam. She’s such crackers.”

He’s also confident that everything will end well, calling the finale “story lines that will go in directions that people aren’t expecting.”

Just then the doorbell rings to the original house music, and we both laugh at the absurdity of it all.

Her on-screen husband, Larry Lamb, spends most of the scene being filmed, wearing shorts, standing behind Mick’s bar and taking shots.

He believes that the show’s continued popularity has something to do with it: “Everyone in it represents an element of contemporary British life.

“Everybody’s there. And if they’re not, someone they know is, and love exists in that form.”

For Matthew Horne, playing Gavin for 17 years is raising all sorts of existential questions: “I’m putting aside that and the aging process.”

“It’s incredible because it’s part of raising people, you know. And we were all in their homes when they were growing up, and now they’re adults and out in the world, and it’s extraordinary. It’s about how much the show means to people. So yeah, it’s a lifetime for me, but it’s a lifetime for a lot of other people.”

At the end of the street, a crowd of about 50 fans have gathered to watch the final week of filming, including Lisa Likening who has traveled down from Cheshire.

Through the fan community, he is befriended by Brenda Kenyon, who owns the house that is used as Stacey’s family home on screen. And all the while she’s sleeping in the room used for Stacey’s bedroom.

Her hopes for the final episode are simple: “There’s a wedding.”

Rob Brydon is adamant that fans will be satisfied: “It’s a beautiful end to the show. Definitely surprises. Things that we as a cast went, ‘What!’

He also revealed that he cried while reading the script to his wife: “She thinks the ending is great.”

Back inside, the cast is reminiscing. Corden points out the exact spot in the kitchen where Smithy ordered the curry, before pointing to the stairs where Pam and Mike once appeared in matching kimonos, revealing that an important part of the show There will be.

With the 2019 Christmas special set in Wales, Joanna Page hasn’t been in Pam and Mick’s for 15 years, so worries about lying outside the house (“I don’t remember this mezzanine walkway”) but she’s making is Most of every day.

“Knowing that it’s finally the last, kind of makes you savor everything.

“These moments that we get together are so special because they’re not going to happen again, in these situations, in these costumes, all of us together.”

Of all the cast, he’s worked with the most gifts, from “a decorative cat-type thing that might be a fish” to Stacey’s house to almost the entire outfit she wears. is (“These shoes are so beautiful, it’s a transport”).

Jones is hugging a cup of tea, waiting to be called up for a scene where she’ll be dancing to Abba, and thinking about how close they are to the end, but how happy they all are. That it is on their terms.

“It’s a full stop,” she says sadly.

“I think we’re very fortunate that we can get to choose to end it, instead of saying, ‘Sorry, we don’t want it anymore.’ I think it’s great to be able to say a very healthy goodbye to him.

Before we go, I ask James Corden how he’d like to remember the show.

He really takes his time to think about it and then talks at length about what he believes to be the show’s DNA, including “all the things that make life good, which is friends, family. And there is love.”

His thesis concludes: “I hope it will be remembered as a show that can make people feel good, that can bring comfort and warmth and a sense of history. That will be great.” If people talk about it like that.”

Now he is waiting to see how the finale is received.

“If we can land the plane safely and hand it over to everybody else on Christmas Day, I don’t know, what a trip it’s been, what a complete trip it’s all been.”

Gavin & Stacey: The Making of the Finale, a 26-minute documentary, is now available on iPlayer. The final itself is broadcast on BBC One at 21:00 GMT on Christmas Day.