BAFTAS’ BIG BATTLES
The STARS AND SHOWS GOING HEAD-TO-HEAD in the main categories at this year’s socially distanced TV awards ceremony…
THE WAIT FOR this year’s BAFTA TV Awards has been a little longer than usual. Originally scheduled for 17 May, the ceremony was postponed due to the coronavirus outbreak.
While it’s now back on the calendar for this Friday, the 2020 awards will look very different – Richard Ayoade will host from a closed studio and the nominees will attend virtually. Here’s our guide to the big battlegrounds in this year’s contest…
LEADING ACTOR
Jared Harris may not have taken home an Emmy for his role as real-life investigator Valery Legasov in Sky Atlantic’s nuclear-plant disaster drama Chernobyl, but he’s favourite to win the BAFTA. He’s up against two fellow first-time nominees – Callum Turner for BBC1’S surveillance drama The Capture and Takehiro Hira for BBC2’S crime thriller Giri/haji. Stephen Graham, meanwhile, picks up his second Leading Actor nomination (after This Is England ’90 in 2016) as a man trying
to make sense of buried childhood traumas in C4’s The Virtues.
LEADING ACTRESS
Could it be two in a row for Jodie Comer? She scooped the award for her role as psychopathic assassin Villanelle in the BBC’S
Killing Eve last year, and since then she’s won an Emmy, making her the favourite this year. But she’s up against Suranne Jones (who won for Doctor Foster in 2016) as 19th-century lesbian landowner Anne Lister in Gentleman Jack, Samantha Morton as a woman drowning in debt in C4’s I Am Kirsty and two-time Oscar-winner Glenda Jackson as a woman living with dementia in BBC1’S Elizabeth Is Missing.
DRAMA SERIES
It could be third time lucky for Netflix’s lavish Royal Family drama The Crown, which is predicted to take home the prize this year after missing out on in 2017 and 2018. C4’s apocalyptic dark comedy The End of the F***ing World picks up its second nomination, after losing to Peaky Blinders in 2018, while Gentleman Jack and Giri/haji are first-time nominees.
SINGLE DRAMA
This is a very strong category for the BBC with nominations for BBC1’S heart-rendering dementia drama Elizabeth Is Missing; BBC2 real-life legal drama Responsible Child about two brothers accused of murdering their abusive stepfather; and BBC3 Online’s The Left Behind, which explored the rise of the far-right in Britain’s post-industrial towns. C4’s Brexit: The Uncivil War, about the Vote Leave campaign, completes the line-up.
After triumphing in this category at the Emmys,
Chernobyl looks
very much the front runner, but three homegrown hits will give it a run for its money: ITV’S true-crime drama
A Confession starring Martin Freeman, about the investigation into the murders of Sian O’callaghan and Becky Goddenedwards; BBC1 thriller The Victim starring Kelly Macdonald as a grieving mother; and Shane Meadows’ The Virtues on C4.
INTERNATIONAL
Sky Atlantic’s Succession, centring on a powerful and dysfunctional media family, will be hard to beat in this category, having pulled off the admirable feat of delivering a second season that was even more favourably received than the first one. However, don’t bet against Netflix’s When They See Us, the story of five juveniles wrongly convicted of the sexual assault of a female jogger in Central Park in 1989. Netflix’s Unbelievable – about the investigation into a series of rapes in Washington State and Colorado from 2008 to 2011 – and Sky Atlantic’s edgy teen drama Euphoria are outside bets.
SCRIPTED COMEDY
C4’s reputation for quality comedy precedes it in this category, with three out of the four nominees coming from the channel. Both Derry Girls and Stath Lets Flats were nominated in this category last year, losing out to Julia Davis’ Sally4ever on Sky Atlantic, and return for another shot alongside Catastrophe’s final series – also on its second nomination, after losing to This Country in 2018. But can any of them see off the formidable challenge of Phoebe Waller-bridge’s all-conquering
BBC comedy Fleabag?