The best drama, it's been said, is like real life, but without all the boring parts.

To that hoary adage, let's add a corollary: The best comedy is also like real life, just more so.

If you're in doubt, I suggest you check out BBC America's "The Gavin and Stacey Christmas Special." (10 p.m. Thursday, Christmas Eve) It’s like a lot of American Christmas specials, but funnier. And sadder. And decidedly more real.

For those who haven't seen it yet (which, alas, includes almost everybody in the colonies), "Gavin and Stacey" is a British comedy series, the freshest, smartest and truest sitcom of any nationality I've seen in ages, a miracle of deadpan mixed with slapstick mixed with non sequitur, fey eccentrics and sweet romance. Two batches of episodes have already run on the BBC, with a third due sometime in the spring. Meanwhile, you can get DVDs of the 12 chapters so far from Netflix. And you really should.

The story has moved along crisply from the beginning. Gavin and Stacey, two young workers in offices from neighboring towns, are drawn to each other after several phone conversations and arrange to meet. They're played by a couple of young, attractive, enthusiastic actors named Mathew Horne and Joanna Page.

Each finds the other irresistible, love proceeds as it often will, but not without obstacles, and soon enough they marry. Not too far in the background, the story also follows their two best friends, Nessa and Smithy, two people of impressive girth who are also drawn to each other. In fact, they are now the parents of a small child. They are played by the equally young Ruth Jones and James Corden, who, in the sort of parlay only the English seem capable of pulling off, are also the creators and writers of the series.

Jones and Corden have drawn up an imposing, amusing cast of characters, both major and minor, who surround and complicate Gavin and Stacey's lives. Gavin's mom, Pam (Alison Steadman), is flighty, excitable, prone to tantrums. But she melts whenever husband Mick (Larry Lamb) suggests they play Charles and Camilla. Doris (Margaret John), Stacey's 70-something neighbor, is always looking for a few good men, and occasionally suggests that Gavin stop by sometime.

But the most fascinating of them all is Nessa herself, with her tattoos and cigarettes and her wistful, sotto voce reminiscences about her days in Vegas and her memories of life on the road with the Stones.

As the hour-long special, a one-off that serves as a 13th episode to tide us over until the next season, begins, Nessa is the Santa Claus in a threadbare roadside Christmas tent set up by Dave Coaches (Steffan Rhodri), so named because he runs a tourist bus line. Smithy may be the father of her child, but Nessa now lives with Dave.

Gavin arrives at the tent to discuss some news with Nessa, but Dave makes him stand in line with the kids. Nessa, meanwhile, is telling a small boy that his wish for an X-Box is "pie in the sky," seeing his father is still in prison. "Lower your sights," she advises the lad.

Ready for a break, she lights a cigarette. Still, if Gavin wants to speak with her, he'll have to sit on her knee: "It's the rules."

At the Christmas gathering, Nessa puffs on a cigar. "A Cuban," she announces in her offhanded, matter-of-fact way. "I smoke a Cuban at Christmas, a pipe at Easter. Always have, always will."

Once it begins, the family party shares some common elements with American holiday shows, including turkey and Christmas songs and a little drinking and considerable rejoicing. But it also has some of the moments that might happen in real homes but never on TV: arguments break out, a punch is thrown, insults are murmured, old wounds picked open. One couple stomps out in anger and takes a turkey with them, but absentedmindedly leaves a grandmother behind.

And in the end, a fresh new twist leaves the story hanging over a cliff.