Gavin and Stacey co-creator Ruth Jones has addressed a “glaring continuity error” from the show’s 2019 Christmas special. Despite the episode’s success, drawing in a staggering 18.49 million viewers, the highest for a non-sporting event in ten years and the leading comedy in 17, it wasn’t without its flaws.
Yesterday (December 25), as fans tuned into the final episode of the beloved BBC series, which topped the charts as the most-watched Christmas Day show, Ruth shared her own observation of a mishap from five years prior.
Speaking to Magic Radio, Ruth admitted: “I watched the 2019 Christmas special the other night and I noticed a glaring continuity error. You know Pam leaves the Christmas puddings behind and forgets to take them because they have been otherwise occupied and they are mortified?”
She continued, highlighting the mix-up: “And Mick, being the calming force of the family, the voice of reason, says ‘it’s okay, we can go to a shop, there’ll be one open’. So they go to get them on the way to the pub. Then Bryn turns up and he’s got the Morrisons bag with the Christmas puddings in, and I think there were nine of them for dinner.
“Then Jason arrives and he’s stopped at the shop and he’s picked up Christmas puddings as well. So the next morning, when they haven’t got the Christmas puddings, one of them, and I can’t remember who it is, says ‘have we left nine Christmas puddings in the pub? There’s 18, there’s double.”
Gavin and Stacey’s co-creator James Corden chimed in with his viewpoint on the confusion over the Christmas puddings, saying to Ruth: “Does Bryn say that they have bought nine? No,” reports the Mirror.
“Nobody says how many they’ve bought, and also, you don’t have a Christmas pudding each on Christmas Day. What I thought that happened is they’d bought four or five and then Jason turned up and bought four.”
Ruth countered with the idea that the discussed puddings were actually smaller “individual” desserts, whilst James noted that the bag seemed too weighty for such small items.
This year’s festive special of Gavin and Stacey captivated an outstanding 12.3 million viewers overnight, as reported by the BBC, ranking it as the top non-sporting broadcast of 2024. The slot following it on BBC One was nabbed by Wallace and Gromit with a viewership of 9.38 million.
Yet, the final viewership figures for the beloved sitcom’s finale are predicted to swell even more, echoing the pattern from 2019, wherein the tallies from BBC iPlayer views were added subsequently.