Gavin & Stacey

- Season 1

(2007)

Gavin Shipman lives in Billericay in Essex with his parents Pam and Mick whilst Stacey West and her mother Gwen live in Barry in South Wales across the road from the widowed Gwen's brother-in-law Bryn. Gavin and Stacey frequently speak on the phone through their work and decide to meet in London. Stacey brings her cynical friend Nessa and Gavin his slobbish mate Smithy. Gavin and Stacey spend the night together in a hotel and agree to start dating. Nessa and Smithy also end up in the sack but romantics these two are not.

After a series of misunderstandings over the phone Gavin drives to Barry where Gwen initially mistakes him for a Jehovah's Witness but, after sharing fish and chips on the sea-front with her, Gavin takes Stacey back to Essex. Pam mistakenly thinks he has blacked her eye after Stacey dons shades to mask a spot but all is resolved as the group attend a pub quiz with bickering couple Dawn and Pete, compered by a drunken Smithy. Next day, as he sees her onto her train, Gavin proposes to Stacey, who accepts before he is held by armed police on suspicion of being a ...

Everyone repairs to Billericay where Nessa and Smithy are at it again in the mud and Gavin and Stacey announce that they intend to get married in eight weeks' time, on the anniversary of her father's death. Pam is highly annoyed to learn that the wedding is to take place in Barry, leading to a slanging match with Gwen. Fortunately Bryn provides a voice of reconciliation, pointing out that all that really matters is that the young couple love each other. The mothers make up and prepare for a Welsh wedding.

The Shipmans and Smithy go down to Barry for the wedding preparations. Bryn is much taken by a conjuror he wants for the reception whilst Smithy is mesmerised by Jammy, the stag party organizer and Pam has cause to regret telling everybody that she is a vegetarian. Gavin is torn between the bride arriving at the church in a horse and carriage, Stacey's request, or by car, and Smithy is a reluctant church-goer to hear the banns read by an eccentric vicar who compares God to sandwiches. After the Essex party have gone Nessa confides in Stacey that she is pregnant by ...

Billericay comes to Barry as the bride and groom hold their simultaneous stag and hen parties. Nessa is still holding back from Smithy the fact that he is about to become a father and Bryn is unsettled when Jason, Stacey's gay older brother, turns up. However the biggest shock of the evening is reserved for Gavin when he learns from Achmed, one of Stacey's ex-boyfriends, that Stacey has been engaged on five previous occasions. He has it out with her and, despite her declaration of love for him, the wedding looks to be in jeopardy.

All doubts aside, Stacey arrives at the church - in the white Bentley - with Bryn who gives her away, after reading a letter of anticipated congratulation from her late father. The ceremony passes off all right, though Bryn is still wary of Jason, Pete and Dawn argue at the reception and Doris from next door comments on the bride's swapping one unenviable surname for another. Gavin gives a heart-felt speech in praise of his new wife whereas Smithy's best man speech is literally speechless as he is overcome by emotion, rather like Pam and Mick as they perform 'Can't ...