Why the middle-aged huns are the real stars of Gavin & Stacey

Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter for all the latest entertainment news and reviews Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter Sign up to our free IndyArts newsletter SIGN UP I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. The show’s undisputed queen is Steadman’s Pam, Essex matriarch and overzealous mother to her “little prince” Gavin. “Gavin’s come home from work and a lot of writers would do a scene like, ‘Hello Mum, you alright?’ ‘Hello son, do you want a cup of tea?’” she said. A season two scene where Gavin, Stacey and their family and friends crowd into an Italian restaurant, where they see Dawn and Pete having a silent dinner with a man they’d tried to recruit into a threesome, only for him to reject them on the count of them looking nothing like the pictures they’d posted online, is one of the show’s bleakest moments – in fact, it wouldn’t feel too out of place in Nighty Night, Davis’s outrageous 2004 black comedy. She’s a relatively conventional character, so it might have been tempting to write her as small-minded and even conservative with a small c. Instead, though, she is one of the most open-minded in the show’s ensemble, whether she is listening to her OAP neighbour Doris recall her latest improbable sexcapades or holding together an unconventional family set-up that also encompasses Stacey’s best pal Nessa and her son.