There were big wins for skills fund contributors at this year’s BAFTA television and craft awards. Held across two ceremonies, the awards celebrate the best in front and behind camera achievements of British television from the past year.
At London’s Royal Festival Hall, Alan Cumming hosted the television awards ceremony where High-end TV Skills Fund contributors were among the night’s winning productions. The headline-making drama, Mr Bates vs The Post Office, won the limited drama award alongside a special award acknowledging the programme’s wider impact.
The BBC adaptation of the Bernardine Evaristo novel, Mr. Loverman, collected two awards as Lennie James and Ariyon Bakare picked up the best actor and best supporting actor prizes. There was another acting win for fellow contributor Baby Reindeer, whose Jessica Gunning who took home the award for supporting actress.
Comedies Gavin & Stacey and Alma’s Not Normal each won one award, recognised in the female comedy performance and scripted comedy categories respectfully, while Danny Dyer won the male comedy performance for his performance in Mr Bigstuff.
Northern Irish police drama, Blue Lights, was the recipient of one of the night’s biggest prizes, picking up the award for drama series.
Held two weeks earlier and hosted by Stacey Dooley, the BAFTA Craft awards toasted the off-screen talent from across below the line departments. Slow Horses picked up two awards at the ceremony, the spy drama receiving the editing: fiction and sound: fiction BAFTAs and Baby Reindeer collected two further prizes, awarded in the writer: drama and director: fiction categories.
Rivals won two awards for make-up and hair design and production design while Bad Sisters, Sweetpea and Supacell received recognition with wins in the original music, titles and graphic identity and scripted casting categories. The costume design award went to Eric; Billy & Molly: An Otter Love Story won the factual director category and Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power picked up the BAFTA for special, visual and graphic effects. The final series of dark comedy, Inside No. 9, won the comedy writing award to make it a total of three BAFTAs since it first aired in 2014.
There were further wins for productions that paid into the Unscripted TV Skills Fund, including for partnering companies BBC, Channel 4, Sky and Netflix. ITV, another partnering company, received a special award for its commissioning of Mr Bates vs The Post Office.
Contributions from productions like these are invested by the Funds into the design and delivery of training programmes that help develop the UK workforce. The collaborative relationship between the Funds and industry allows productions to provide vital placements to those on a range of ScreenSkills funded initiatives to help candidates develop the tools and work-ready skills in a live environment.
We congratulate each of the winning and nominated productions and thank them for their contributions.