BAFTAs: Real-life dramas crowned at awards as royal saga deposed
It was meant to be all about The Crown, but one of the most expensive TV series ever went away without an award at the TV BAFTAs.
Monday 15 May 2017 16:41, UK
It was a night of art imitating life, as shows based on reality cleaned up at the BAFTA TV Awards as hot favourite The Crown failed to sparkle.
Damilola Taylor's father gave the most emotional speech of the evening when the moving BBC drama Damilola, Our Loved Boy won in the Best Single Drama category.
Since the 10-year-old schoolboy Damilola Taylor was killed in south London in 2000, his father Richard has campaigned tirelessly against gang violence in the capital.
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Richard Taylor used the BAFTA acceptance speech as an opportunity to appeal to end the stabbings on the streets of London.
Dedicating the award to Damilola's memory, he said: "I want to appeal to young people on the streets killing themselves. Parents are crying... killing has gone up recently in the city of London. I beg you: stop unnecessary killing of innocent people, spread the message."
The drama won its second award of the night when Wunmi Mosaki took Best Supporting Actress, and also dedicated it to Damilola and his late mother Gloria Taylor.
Cuba Gooding Jr continued the crusade of drama exposing truths when he took to the stage to say "I just hope we shined a little light on what happened" when he accepted the Best International award for The People v OJ Simpson: American Crime Story (in which he played OJ Simpson).
Charlie Brooker's 2016 Wipe win for Best Comedy Programme cemented the view that we apparently love watching shows about reality - albeit a depressing one.
In his acceptance speech Brooker joked at the tragic irony of winning a gong off the back of the pain that 2016 unleashed, saying: "Winning an award for summing up a horrible year is like winning an award for doing a painting of a haemorrhoid."
The Leading Actor BAFTA went to Adeel Akhtar for Murdered By My Father. He told Sky News he was proud to take the role because it had shone a light on honour killings. He beat Benedict Cumberbatch and Robbie Coltrane to the award.
Best Mini-Series went to National Treasure - another fiction based on the high-profile stories of celebrities accused of rape and sexual assault, starring Coltrane and Julie Walters for Channel 4.
The fascination with history and real life was continued when Best Feature went to the Danny Dyer episode of Who Do You Think You Are (if you missed it, they discovered Dyer is related to royalty).
The trend for fiction based on true stories was evident in Netflix's historical drama The Crown which had led the nominations with five, but in the end it failed to rule the night, going home empty-handed.
Happy Valley took the two major awards of the evening - Best Drama (beating both The Crown and War And Peace to the title), and Best Actress, which went to Sarah Lancashire (rather than The Crown's Claire Foy).
While much of the subject matter of the programmes being celebrated was bleak, there were also lots of laughs at the awards ceremony held at London's Royal Festival Hall.
Gooding Jr got one of the biggest laughs for joking that "the winner is Moonlight" - a nod to the disastrous Oscars mix-up when they announced the Best Film wrong.
He was presenting Phoebe Waller-Bridge with the award for Best Female performance in a comedy for Fleabag. She was by far the most evidently thrilled to have won, making a rude joke about dreaming of winning a BAFTA, which we won't repeat here.
As expected David Attenborough won Specialist Factual for Planet Earth II. Best Male Comedy Performance went to Steve Coogan for Alan Partridge's Scissored Isle (Sky Atlantic) and Michael McIntyre took Best Entertainment Performance for his Big Show, beating Graham Norton and Claudia Winkleman in his category.
Sky Sports' coverage of The Open won the BAFTA for best sports production.
It doesn't seem possible for a TV awards ceremony to go by without honouring Ant and Dec, who accepted two BAFTAs; one for Best Entertainment Programme for Saturday Night Takeaway and also for Best Live TV Event for the Queen's 90th Birthday Celebration.
Joanna Lumley won the Fellowship Award for her astonishing contribution to British television, and Sue Perkins did a great job of presenting the ceremony, opening with a joke about "not another woman hosting an awards show" and maintaining the momentum for the two and a half hour-long ceremony.