Viewers taken for E. Granted
RICHARD E. Grant and Alison Hammond? Really Bafta? Why?
The hosts with the least were awkward enough together. Apart, they stank like a Western Front latrine.
Grant was like the essence of luvvie-dom distilled into a suit, while Hammond’s gormless interviews sucked the life out of a grim old night that seemed to drag on longer than Avatar 2.
Seriously, if the Bafta stuffed shirts had booked Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance it couldn’t have been less engaging. Only Putin’s Moscow address was duller.
Irritations included excess gushing, the funereal pace and a severe lack of laughs. It took 20 minutes for the first award.
A sign language cock-up meant best supporting actress “Kerry Condon” was misread as “Carey Mulligan”.
They cut screenwriter Lesley Paterson’s acceptance speech, although her 16-year struggle to get All
Quiet On The Western Front made was a story worth hearing.
REG got teary over the rollcall of the dead – did he know them all? But Bafta shamefully forgot movie veteran Bernard Cribbins.
Foreign films dominated. Germany’s All Quiet, the cod-Irish Banshees Of Inisherin, Baz Luhrmann’s brilliant Elvis and the sheer escapist joy of
Everything Everywhere All At Once (which won sod-all).
I don’t hold with race-based quotas. Awards should be based on ability alone (which is why Danielle Deadwyler should’ve won for playing Mamie in Till).
But why can’t the British Academy make more of an effort to back the British film industry? Would a category for best British flick hurt?
Or don’t movies like The Duke, Operation Mincemeat and A Violent Man appeal to this high-brow elite who bore us annually with their marathon love-in?
Get Gervais to host next year, broadcast it live, send Alison back to daytime and give REG something new to talk about other than 1987’s Withnail & I. ●BAFTA questions: What does the “E” stand for in Richard E. Grant – emotional or exasperating? Did he nick that cape from Rick Wakeman? What has more piercings, the All Quiet corpses or Cynthia Erivo’s kisser?