gavin & stacey = friends

May 18th, 2008

i didn’t really get into the bbc’s hit comedy gavin & stacey until the second series, but by the end of this last series i thought it was a cute little show that i really quite enjoyed – but i did start noticing a lot of similarities to a little tv show from across the pond.

nessa is phoebe stacey’s best friend is nessa, she’s a little odd and has an eventful history full of relationships with celebrities as well as some really important / bizarre jobs. phoebe is a little odd, and although she does have a more realistic, but still bizarre history, she still has those relationships with famous people that crop up in conversations that are then never to be heard of again. they have both been pregnant too.

gavin & stacey are ross & rachel gavin and stacey are the central characters, they are the ones that push the story lines along, they are also the least interesting out of the bunch – and it’s the same with ross and rachel in friends. if you did a poll of who your favourite characters were then these 4 would finish bottom, they are probably the most ‘normal’ but that’s not what we watch the show for – it’s the odd bunch around them that make each show tick.

smithy is joey this is a slightly trickier one, but food is their common obsession, they’re also not the cleverest of characters in their respected shows. if a joke is going to be aimed at someone’s lack of intelligence, then smithy and joey (both end in y’s too) are going to get it square in the chops. they both have dominant and fairly masculine sisters as well, although joey does have a lot of sisters so maybe that’s clutching at straws a little.

there are quite a few differences, and i’m certainly not saying that the creators of gavin and stacey directly copied friends, but the latter is probably one of the most popular comedy sitcoms that television has ever known – so a little unconscious inspiration can’t be faulted.

Tags: bbc, comedy, comparison, friends, gavin & stacey, gavin and stacey, television