“Gavin & Stacey: The Finale” proved to be a winner for the BBC in the Christmas Day ratings battle in Britain.
The highly anticipated 90-minute special, written and produced by stars James Corden and Ruth Jones, attracted 12.3 million viewers, for a 64.75% audience share, according to monitoring agency Overnights.TV.
Reviewers were also convinced: The Guardian called it “a beautiful, moving piece of television,” while The Times of London’s reviewer suggested, “It’s rare to get a communal ‘TV event’ these days, but this felt like one an event. I doubt they could have ended it much better.”
Created by Corden and Jones, “Gavin & Stacey” first aired in 2007, ran for three seasons until 2010 and became a cult hit. A Christmas special aired in 2019, and fans have repeatedly asked Corden — who until last year was busy hosting CBS’s “The Late Late Show” — repeatedly asking when he would return for another outing.
The special was well ahead of the next most-watched show, “Wallace & Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl,” which drew 9.4 million viewers and had a 53.07% market share. The stop-motion film, which was also broadcast on the BBC, is Aardman Animation’s second feature film after ‘Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit’ from 2005. The film will be released on Netflix on January 3.
Meanwhile, some 5 million people (44.8% of the audience) watched King Charles II deliver his third annual Christmas speech, which was filmed earlier this month at London’s Fitzrovia Chapel – rather than the traditional venue of a royal residence. In his speech, the King reflected on the challenges facing a rocky geopolitical climate, as well as those he and his family have recently undergone, with both Charles and his daughter-in-law Catherine, Princess of Wales, diagnosed with: cancer early this year. Last month his wife, Queen Camilla, fell ill with a respiratory infection, forcing her to cancel a number of events, while his daughter, Princess Anne, was hospitalized this summer after being injured by a horse.
“We all experience some form of suffering at some point in our lives, whether it is mental or physical,” the king said in his speech. “The extent to which we help each other – and receive support from each other, whether we are people of faith or not – is a measure of our civilization as nations.”