It’s billed as the biggest night in the UK television calendar, with Hollywood stars including Kate Winslet, Gary Oldman and Daniel Radcliffe all up for awards.
Over 100 shows are nominated across 27 categories following record number of entries for awards this year, and with hit shows including Slow Horses, Bad Sisters, The Traitors and The White Lotus all in the running, the competition is set to be a closely fought.
As some of the biggest stars of British TV prepare for a night celebrating their craft, we take a look at what you can expect from the show.
Ben Whishaw in This Is Going To Hurt. Pic:BBC/Sister/AMC/Anika Molnar
Who could win?
Leading the nominations are NHS medical comedy drama This Is Going To Hurt and police drama The Responder, both with six nods.
Both shows have been created by former public service workers – with This Is Going To Hurt based on the memoir written by doctor-turned-comedian Adam Kay, and The Responder written by ex-Merseyside Police officer Tony Schumacher.
The leading actors in each show – Martin Freeman as demoted police inspector Chris Carson, and Ben Whishaw as Adam Kay – are both nominated for leading actor.
Following the theme of real-life translated into TV, actor Adeel Akhtar, is nominated in the best supporting actor category for his role in Sherwood – a gritty crime drama inspired by real life murders in a Nottinghamshire community.
Speaking ahead of the awards, Akhtar told Sky News he thinks people are responding to stories rooted in reality because: “By creating TV that looks at historical injustices that have occurred or current injustices that have occurred and just analysing it and deep diving into [we can] work out the mechanisms of what’s going on and whether we could be doing this better.”
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Sharon Horgan’s black comedy Bad Sisters, royal-based fiction The Crown, epic Western The English and spy thriller Slow Horses all have five nods each.
Daisy May Cooper’s comedy Am I Being Unreasonable? has four nominations, as does a trio of shows all featuring fellas in the title – Jack Rooke’s Big Boys, Pete Jackson’s Somewhere Boy and Ronan Bennett’s Top Boy receive four nominations each.
The Memorable Moment category – the only prize voted for by the public – includes Paddington meeting the Queen for Party At The Palace, the Stranger Things gang rescuing Max to the hit Kate Bush track and the final roundtable in The Traitors.
The BAFTA Craft Awards were announced in April, with Game Of Thrones prequel House Of The Dragon and Adam Kay’s This Is Going To Hurt the biggest winners of the night scooping three prizes apiece.
Daniel Radcliffe
First timers
This year is a good one for stars not previously up for BAFTAs, but that doesn’t mean they are names we’ve never heard.
There are 18 first time nominees in the acting categories – including Cillian Murphy, Daniel Radcliffe, Sue Perkins, Siobhan McSweeney and Taron Egerton.
Three of the Emerging Talent nominees – Big Boy’s Jack Rooke, Mood’s Nicole Lecky and Somewhere Boy’s Pete Jackson – also scooping the most named nominations.
Meanwhile, comedian Ben Elton is nominated for an award, 30 years after his last nod.
Nominated for the one-off revival of his ’80s hit Friday Night Live, he told Sky News: “It means more because, I mean, I won three in in the eighties, which was amazing. Then stopped dead in 1999 and never been back. But my kids are alive now, it would be nice to have one they could see me accepting. The kids are grown up and yet they weren’t born when I was last here at BAFTA.”
Hosts Rob Beckett and Romesh Ranganthan. Pic: BAFTA/Rachell Smith
Who will present?
Comedians Rob Beckett and Romesh Ranganathan will host the awards, with Ranganathan also up for one himself.
His show, The Misadventures of Romesh Ranganathan, is up for best feature and will see him do battle with Joe Lycett, Big Zuu and Martin Lewis to take home the coveted BAFTA mask statuette.
Speaking to Sky News ahead of the awards, Ranganathan and Beckett compared their hosting duties to being “the best man and the award winners the stag,” adding, “and people get annoyed if the best man goes on and on and on and tries to the make the day about them so we’re not going to be like that.”
Lewis Capaldi
Who will perform?
As well as dishing out awards, there will also be an exclusive performance on the night.
Lewis Capaldi will give his first TV performance of his new single, Wish You The Best.
The Scottish star’s debut album, Divinely Uninspired To A Hellish Extent sold over 10 million copies worldwide and became the biggest selling UK album of 2019 and 2020.
His performance comes ahead of his sold-out tour of North America, which will be followed by performances at Reading and Leeds festival and Glastonbury.
TV historian David Olusoga
Special award
While nominations don’t always translate to wins, at least one of one of the night’s prize winners is guaranteed.
Historian and broadcaster David Olusoga will also be honoured with a BAFTA Special Award for his “outstanding” TV contribution during his three-decade career.
The award is one of the academy’s highest honours and previous recipients include sports commentator John Motson, comedian Sir Lenny Henry, TV presenter Cilla Black and actor Idris Elba.
The 53-year-old Nigerian-born star has fronted numerous hit shows including A House Through Time,
Black And British: A Forgotten History and Britain’s Forgotten Slave Owners. He’s also written seven books.
Protesters on the US writers’ picket line
Meanwhile, over in America
And of course, as we celebrate the best in British and international television, TV writers in the US are striking on the picket line.
Members of the Writers Guild of America are demanding higher minimum pay, more writers per show and less exclusivity on single projects.
They say they have suffered financially during the streaming TV boom, in part due to shorter seasons and smaller residual payments. Supported by the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain, no British writers will cross the picket line to work for US shows during the strike.
So, while the star-studded BAFTA TV Awards takes place, many of the industry professionals present will be standing in solidarity – albeit remotely – with their American counterparts.
The BAFTA Television Awards is being held at Royal Festival Hall on Sunday from 7pm and we’ll be liveblogging the entire ceremony and sharing the winners as they’re announced here on Sky News.
