Gavin and Stacey star James Corden has revealed an emotional reason why the series won’t be making a return, after its last ever episode aired on Christmas Day.

The TV presenter and actor said his character Neil “Smithy” Smith and Vanessa “Nessa” Jenkins had to “end together” in the series’ final episode on Christmas Day. The 46-year-old was speaking in BBC’s Gavin And Stacey: A Fond Farewell documentary, as he and co-creator Ruth Jones – who plays Nessa – explained why the finale wouldn’t see Smithy and Nessa’s married life.

Gavin And Stacey: The Finale saw Smithy finally decide to marry Nessa after leaving his wedding to Sonia (Laura Aikman) at the altar, while Stacey’s mother Gwen West (Melanie Walters) is revealed to be in a secret relationship with Dave Coaches (Steffan Rhodri).

Speaking about the final episode’s ending, co-writer Corden said: “Probably from the first Christmas special that we did, when Dave proposes and Smithy says, ‘Don’t marry him’, from that minute on it felt like they had to end together. And that’s what he says in this last scene, ‘I know it’s messy and not perfect, but that’s because we’re messy and not perfect’.”

Jones added: “When Smithy and Nessa got together, that really is the end, because we can never see them actually together. Seeing Smithy put the bins out, it just won’t work.”

Speaking about another couple who’s romance shocked viewers, Jones said she had also “always wanted Gwen to have a relationship”, while Corden spoke about why he chose to reintroduce Sonia. He said: “No-one would ever say, did he choose Nessa or Sonia? Sonia sort of just wasn’t in people’s minds that (it) was something that might happen.”

Elsewhere in the documentary, the writers discuss sending the initial plans for the first series to BBC Three controller Stuart Murphy, who replied with a letter which read: “I think it could be one of the best things we ever do.”

Jones and Corden also explain how they almost decided against the show’s 2019 Christmas special after struggling to write it. Corden said: “The 2019 special, I don’t know if people know this, we gave up on it at one point. We’d written, maybe halfway through, and we read it, and we were like, this is rubbish, this is awful, it’s terrible. I remember saying to each other, ‘Well, thank god we didn’t call the BBC’.”

He continued: “So we ate dinner in my kitchen, and I said, ‘Look, I think we probably owe it to the show to go back in and talk about why it’s bad and say goodbye to it’. We were like, two hours from saying bye to it and going, we can never do it again, it isn’t very good.”

In the behind the scenes documentary, the series’ cast can be seen reading through the script for the finale together for the first time, with Corden explaining what he hoped fans would get from the episode. He said: “I think what we’d really, really love, both of us (Corden and Jones), is for the audience to feel a sense of closure. And also for them to feel like, ‘Oh, I’m satisfied by that, I’ve seen 17 years of these characters’ lives and how they’ve grown and changed, and that’s really never been lost on us.”

The special finishes with the cast gathering together ahead of the final day of filming, where Corden tells them it is “something to be really proud of”. He told his fellow actors: “I don’t know if you as actors in this room know how much Ruth and I owe you the success of the show. So many days we would write a scene, and then you’d go, I don’t know if this is right, I don’t know if it’s good enough, and then you’d put it in your voices and it would just be alright. And then to come back and do this one, I don’t know, it feels very, very special, and I feel very, very lucky to have been able to create this, well, for such a brilliant group of people.”

Jones added: “If I die the day after tomorrow, I will die knowing that I have been very, very blessed to have been part of such a beautiful show, and to have worked with such a gorgeous group of people, both on and off screen. Thank you to everybody, and I raise my glass to you all.”

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