Gavin & Stacey
I am not a great fan of award ceremonies. They too easily become exercises in self-congratulation and promotion. But they do tell you something about what is popular and what people like. Last month the BAFTAs gave Gavin and Stacey the TV audience award for Best Programme.
The show's writers, James Corden and Ruth Jones, who also appear in the programme as Smithy and Nessa, received it. Because it's been on BBC3 and we can't get it (don't ask) we were only introduced to the delights of Gavin and Stacey when it was rerun on BBC2. If you haven't dipped in it's about, yes you guessed it, Gavin and Stacey who meet on the phone because they do business together with each other's companies. She is in Wales and he's in Essex. But of course, they eventually meet and fall in love and marry, even if Gavin doesn't find out till late in the day that Stacey has been engaged five times before. Smithy and Nessa are their respective best mates. They also have a little thing going on which is being played out in the present series. We shall see.
Gavin and Stacey has been acclaimed as the modern day successor to Only Fools and Horses. It's a warm-hearted sitcom. Gavin and Stacey each come from good-hearted, well-intentioned families and the humour is in their eccentricities, which are normal for them, and funny to us. There are some capers and some sex but in such a way that it is all accepted as part of life's rich pattern.
Not all sitcoms are played for laughs. Eastenders is a regular vale of tears and and the appeal, I suppose, is in the scandals, secrets and lies. What makes Gavin and Stacey attractive is that it paints life as we know it but manages at the same time to be upbeat and benevolent with a rich dash of genuine love for one another thrown in for good measure. Watching it is more of a joy than a sorrow and it makes you feel hopeful and that life is worth living.
Joy is one of those words that comes up in the Bible and perhaps what we see in Gavin and Stacey is what it means: joy in life itself. Not something that you have to work up but something you can enter into. The trouble with religion is that it gets hidebound with rules and regulations. They can too easily become the be-all and end-all. They are helpful as parameters and boundaries but not as a purpose for living. There is something rather noble, as well as romantic, about Gavin driving all the way from Essex to South Wales, on a whim, to clear up a misunderstanding on the phone and tell Stacey he loves her.
That's my kind of TV and it's my kind of religion as well.
Canon David Eaton, from the June 2008 magazine