Gavin & Stacey: Season One

You know you're not in Hollywood when one sitcom character calls another a “leek-munching sheep shagger.” While Gavin & Stacey—set in England and Wales and filmed primarily on location in the latter—more or less fits the sitcom bill, the show lacks a laugh track, studio audience, or over-dependence on facile one-liners that characterize its American counterparts. In the first of these six episodes from the 2007 first season, the two title characters (played by Mathew Horne and Joanna Page)—who've been chatting by phone for a few months (he's in Essex, she's in a seaside village in Wales)—meet for the first time. Things move right along from there: Gavin proposes in the next episode, their families meet in the third, and the pair are married in the season finale, just nine weeks after laying eyes on each other. Aside from the fact that Stacey was engaged five times previously, there's nothing particularly special about these two. But the others in their orbit threaten to steal the show, including Stacey's Uncle Bryn (Rob Brydon), Gavin's mum Pamela (Alison Steadman), and especially the couple's respective best friends, Smithy and Nessa (James Corden and Ruth Jones, who also wrote the terrific scripts). Watching this talented ensemble deal with everything from an unsightly zit on Stacey's nose to the various distractions at a Welsh “wedding fayre” to more serious circumstances (Smithy and Nessa's drunken shag in the first episode has consequences that presumably will be dealt with in the second season), viewers may not find this series to be particularly “edgy,” but it definitely is fun. DVD extras include audio commentaries, a “making-of” featurette, and outtakes. Recommended. (S. Graham)