BAFTA Television Awards: Nominations Announced

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts (BAFTA) has today announced the nominations for the Arqiva British Academy Television Awards, which reward the very best in television broadcast on British screens over the past year. This year’s ceremony will be held at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane, London on Sunday 18 May.

Southcliffe receives four nominations including Leading Actor for Sean Harris, Supporting Actor for Rory Kinnear and Supporting Actress for Shirley Henderson. Southcliffe’s final nomination comes in the Mini-Series category.

The IT Crowd computer nerds Richard Ayoade and Chris O’Dowd compete with The Wrong Mans’ hapless council workers Mathew Baynton and James Corden in the Male Performance in a Comedy Programme category. Ayoade and O’Dowd’s on-screen colleague Katherine Parkinson is nominated in Female Performance in a Comedy Programme for her role as Jen Barber, alongside Frances De La Tour for Vicious, Doon MacKichan for Plebs and Kerry Howard for Him & Her: The Wedding; which is also nominated in the Situation Comedy category with Count Arthur Strong, Toast of London and The IT Crowd.

The Village and Broadchurch follow closely behind with three nominations each, competing across the Leading Actress, Supporting Actor and Drama Series categories. Maxine Peake and Nico Mirallegro represent The Village with their respective acting nominations and go up against last year’s Leading Actress winner Olivia Colman and Supporting Actor David Bradley for their performances in Broadchurch. Joining them in Drama Series are My Mad Fat Diary and Top of the Lake.

Alongside Southcliffe’s Sean Harris, the Leading Actor category features fellow first-time nominees Jamie Dornan for The Fall and Luke Newberry for In The Flesh, with both programmes also being nominated for Mini-Series. The three actors are joined by Dominic West for his portrayal as Richard Burton in Burton and Taylor; West won in this category in 2012 for Appropriate Adult.

Helena Bonham Carter receives a nomination for her performance as Elizabeth Taylor in Burton and Taylor in the Leading Actress category alongside The Village’s Maxine Peake and Broadchurch’s Olivia Colman; Kerrie Hayes completes the line-up for her role as Esther Price in The Mill.

The Great Train Robbery gains the fourth nomination in the Mini-Series category alongside Southcliffe, The Fall and In The Flesh.

Broadchurch’s David Bradley is joined by three first-time nominees in the Supporting Actor category; Jerome Flynn for his role in Ripper Street; The Village’s Nico Mirallegro and Southcliffe’s Rory Kinnear.

On-screen step-sisters Sarah Lancashire and Nicola Walker go up against each other in the Supporting Actress category for their roles in Last Tango in Halifax alongside Claire Rushbrook for her role as Mrs Earl in My Mad Fat Diary and Southcliffe’s Shirley Henderson.

The nominations for Single Drama are: An Adventure in Space and Time, Black Mirror: Be Right Back, Complicit and The Wipers Times.

Ceremony host, and last year’s winner in this category, Graham Norton is nominated for Entertainment Performance for The Graham Norton Show. Up against the host this year are: Sarah Millican for The Sarah Millican Television Programme; Charlie Brooker for 10 O’Clock Live; and Ant and Dec for Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway.

The Graham Norton Show is also nominated for Comedy and Comedy Entertainment Programme with A League of Their Own, Would I Lie to You? and last year’s winner, The Revolution Will Be Televised.

Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway is also nominated in the Entertainment Programme category alongside Derren Brown: The Great Art Robbery, Dynamo Magician Impossible and Strictly Come Dancing.

The nominations for the Soap & Continuing Drama award are: Casualty, Coronation Street, EastEnders and Holby City.

Bollywood Carmen Live, a Bollywood spin on the classic opera competes with Glastonbury 2013 in the Sport & Live Event category. The Ashes 2013: 1st Test, Day 5 and the Wimbledon Men’s Final complete the line-up in this category.

The International category features crime dramas Borgen (Denmark), Breaking Bad (USA), political drama House of Cards (USA) and French supernatural drama The Returned.

In the Specialist Factual category the nominations are: David Attenborough’s Natural History Museum Alive; Martin Luther King and the March on Washington; Richard III: The King in the Car Park and Story of the Jews.

In Factual Series, the nominations are: Bedlam; Educating Yorkshire; Keeping Britain Alive: The NHS in a Day and The Route Masters: Running London’s Roads.

Hoping to make it a hat-trick of BAFTA wins in the Features category is The Great British Bake Off, nominated alongside The Choir: Sing While You Work, Grand Designs and Long Lost Family.

The nominees for Reality and Constructed Factual are as diverse as the genre itself with The Big Reunion, Dragons’ Den, Gogglebox and The Undateables competing for the award.

Channel 4 dominates Current Affairs with The Cruel Cut and three Dispatches programmes: The Hunt for Britain’s Sex Gangs; North Korea: Life Inside the Secret State and Syria: Across the Lines. The channel receives 27 BAFTA nominations, the most of any single channel this year and its highest number to date.

The nominations for Single Documentary are 28 Up South Africa; The Day Kennedy Died; The Murder Trial and The Unspeakable Crime: Rape.

In the News Coverage category, Channel 4 News and ITV News At Ten go head-to-head with two regional news programmes – The Dale Cregan Verdict: North West Tonight Special and The Lee Rigby Trial: ITV Granada Reports.

Voting opens today for the publicly-voted Radio Times Audience Award: Breaking Bad, Broadchurch, Doctor Who: The Day of the Doctor, Educating Yorkshire, Gogglebox and The Great British Bake Off.