CONFESSION time. I never really got Gavin & Stacey, even when it was massive, back in the noughties.

Well, not in a barking-out-the-catchphrases way that a lot of people seemed to get the show.

I could see that it had warmth and a certain amount of laughs, but the storylines were thin to the point of being almost invisible and performances were hopelessly uneven.

Two of the leads, James Corden and Ruth Jones, were good while the other two, Matthew Horne and Joanna Page, appeared to be taking part in a CBeebies show, where they had to over-enunciate every line for an audience of seven-year-old 'slow streamers.'

So it wasn't ever Gavin & Stacey at all. It was Smithy & Nessa, whose romance I wasn't buying for a minute.

The more successful it got the more it also lurched towards self-parody and over-use of a certain catchphrase that I still can't bring myself to repeat nearly ten years after it was last seen.

It's amazing, though, what a decade of smothering political-correctness, The Mash Report, Citizen Khan, Call the Midwife festive "specials" and a Porridge reboot can do for a show, isn't it?

'Cos I've watched the one-off Gavin & Stacey Christmas episode twice now and, compared to pretty much everything else the BBC comedy has done since 2010, it's a minor classic.

All the same problems remained, of course. With bells on. Performances ranged from the brilliant Corden, who's the only cast member leading cast member able to do both light and shade.

To the embarrassing Julia Davis, who was all at sea doing a hopeless, tagged-on cameo as Dawn.

But I get it now. Gavin & Stacey's not just warm, it's authentic and has heart, as well.

Unusually for the show, this special also had a decent, slow-burning storyline.

Since we last saw them, back in 2010, Gavin and Stacey had drifted into a sexless marriage, while Smithy's split from Nessa and now punching hopelessly above his weight with the beautiful, social-climbing Sonia, played by Laura Aikman, who he met down the local golf club.

DECENT STORYLINE

All the other regulars, including Larry Lamb and Alison Steadman as Mick and Pam, and Rob Brydon's Uncle Bryn (Leave it, he's not worth it), were back as well for a fraught Christmas on Barry Island, where they absolutely nailed the silence-filling obsessions that underpin British life, including our weird fixation with preferred traffic routes and motorway service stations.

"Jase, tell us what service stations did you stop at on the way here?"

"Heston. Only to fill up."

"Oh."

"Then Membury."

"HOORAY!"

At the heart of the episode, though, was an age old, everyman struggle for Smithy who's torn between the woman he likes and ends up in bed with again on Christmas Eve, Nessa, and the one he actually fancies (Sonia) and longs to bond with so much Gavin's noticed he changes his accent to impress her.

"You talk different around her."

(Indignantly) "No I don't."

"Yes you do. Earlier you used the word exonerate."

It's a male struggle that's as old as time, of course. The beautiful thing about Gavin & Stacey, however, was that it was done in a non-judgemental way and without any of those tut-tutting lectures about sexism and misogyny that make every other BBC sitcom and a drama a non-starter for at least half the population.

In real life, I hardly need tell you, Smithy ends up with Sonia every time.

On television, Gavin & Stacey flipped the script and left itself open up for another special by having Nessa, on one knee, asking him: "Will you marry me?"

In the name of future Christmas specials and all that is sane, son, go with your hormones and say: "No."

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