Ruth Jones Opens a New Chapter after Gavin & Stacey
FOR many viewers, Ruth Jones will probably always be Nessa.
The black bob, the leather waistcoat, the cigarette, the extraordinary stories and that unmistakable “what’s occurring?” helped make Gavin & Stacey one of the best-loved British comedies of its generation.
But anyone wondering what Jones would do once the final chapter of Barry and Billericay had been written now has an answer.
Quite a lot, as it turns out.
The Welsh actor, writer and producer currently has three very different television projects either on screen or in development, ranging from a dark Netflix thriller to a new comedy rooted firmly in Wales and, most recently, a major reunion with James Corden.
The newest announcement is The Choir, an eight-part comedy-drama created by Jones and Corden for Apple TV. It is their first project together since Gavin & Stacey: The Finale and is already in production ahead of a planned global release in 2027.
This time there will be no Smithy and Nessa.
Corden and Jones play estranged brother and sister Ben and Lisa. Ben has been living abroad before circumstances force him to return to the small English town — and the family — he left behind. Somehow, a struggling local choir becomes part of the attempt to repair their fractured relationship.
And the cast suggests Apple has considerable ambitions for the series.
Tom Davis, Jason Watkins, David Harewood and Welsh actor Alexandria Riley are among the ensemble, while Hannah Waddingham, James McAvoy and Jim Broadbent will appear as guest stars. Jones and Corden are also executive producers.
It is an intriguing next move for a writing partnership inevitably associated with one enormous television success.
Rather than attempting Gavin & Stacey Mark II, the pair appear to have gone somewhere different — although family relationships, friendship, community and music hardly feel alien to the world in which their earlier success thrived.
Jones has already been showing another side of herself during 2026.
In Netflix thriller Run Away, based on the Harlan Coben novel, she appears alongside James Nesbitt as private investigator Elena Ravenscroft, an ex-police officer who becomes caught up in a missing-person investigation linked to a series of murders.
For viewers accustomed to seeing Jones primarily in comedy, it is a strikingly different role.
Jones described Elena as unlike anyone she had played before: difficult to read, unpredictable, highly intelligent, but also warm and empathetic.
And then there is perhaps the most Welsh of her current projects.
Better Later reunites Jones with fellow Welsh actor and writer Steve Speirs, with the pair both writing and starring in the new six-part BBC comedy.
It centres on two strangers who meet at a knee trauma clinic. Speirs plays Clive, a widowed retired teacher, while Jones plays Shelley Anne, an environmental health officer going through a difficult divorce. Their unlikely friendship becomes the heart of the story.
The programme is being filmed around south Wales, including Bannau Brycheiniog, and is set in the fictional Welsh village of Brynfach. Jones has described it as a project “35 years in the making”, dating back to when she first met Speirs.
That long friendship adds another dimension.
Jones and Speirs worked together on Stella and have also appeared together more recently in factual television. Now they are creating something built around friendship in middle age — a very different proposition from both Run Away and The Choir.
Taken together, the three projects illustrate just how broad Jones’s career has become.
There is the actor stepping into darker territory with Netflix. There is the Welsh writer returning to south Wales for a home-grown BBC comedy. And there is the internationally successful creative partnership with James Corden embarking on something completely new for Apple.
It also underlines something that can occasionally be obscured by the sheer popularity of Nessa. Ruth Jones has never simply been a performer in Gavin & Stacey. She co-created and co-wrote it, created and starred in Stella, has written novels and established herself as one of Wales’ most recognisable television writers as well as actors.
In May, that wider career was recognised when she received a Lifetime Achievement award at the RTS Cymru Wales Awards.
The remarkable thing is that it hardly looks like a career winding down. Quite the opposite.
With Run Away demonstrating a very different acting range, Better Later bringing her creative work firmly back to Wales, and The Choir reuniting one of British television’s most successful writing partnerships for a worldwide audience, Ruth Jones appears to be entering one of the busiest periods of her career.
Nessa may have finally found her ending.
Ruth Jones clearly has plenty more stories to tell.
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Did Ewe Know?
Better Later has effectively been gestating for more than three decades. Ruth Jones first met Steve Speirs around 35 years ago, long before either became familiar television faces, and she has jokingly pointed out that it is not because they are particularly slow writers — they have simply been rather busy in the meantime.