Actor Ben Whishaw and actress Sheridan Smith pose with their awards after winning “leading actor” and “leading actress” awards during the British Academy Television Awards in London.
Reuters/London
Ben Whishaw was named best actor at the British Academy of Film and Television Arts (Bafta) awards, cementing his status as one of the UK’s new leading men after starring in the James Bond movie Skyfall, while a satire lampooning London Olympic organisers won two awards.
Whishaw, 32, who is currently performing with Judi Dench in London’s West End theatre district, won the award for playing Richard II in a TV film based on William Shakespeare’s play that was commissioned by the BBC.
“I’m really, really surprised. I was just hoping it would be one of the others just so I wouldn’t have to come up here and say anything,” Whishaw, the gadget guy Q in Skyfall, told a star-studded ceremony at the Royal Festival Hall.
The award for best actress went to Sheridan Smith for playing the wife of the great train robber Ronnie Biggs in ITV’s Mrs Biggs. She beat the bookmaker’s favourite Sienna Miller, nominated for playing the American actress Tippi Hedren with whom Alfred Hitchcock was said to be obsessed, in the drama The Girl co-produced by the BBC and Time Warner’s HBO.
The biggest winner of the night was the BBC comedy programme Twenty Twelve about organisers of the 2012 Olympics, which won the best situation comedy and also the award for best female in a comedy programme for actress Olivia Colman.
Colman also won best supporting actress for Accused.
Another Olympic show, The London 2012 Paralympic Games on Channel 4, won the prize for best sport and live event.
The prize for best single drama went to Murder by Danish director Birger Larsen who also made the hit Nordic TV thriller The Killing, while the best drama went to Last Tango in Halifax about teenage sweethearts reunited 60 years on.
HBO show Girls, a comedy-drama about a group of 20-somethings in New York, won the international award, beating the Danish crime drama The Bridge, the post 9/11 psychological drama Homeland, and fantasy epic Game of Thrones.
But Game of Thrones was the public’s favourite, winning the Radio Times Audience Award voted for by the public. Film and TV star Michael Palin, who made his name as a founder of comedy group Monty Python, was presented with an Academy Fellowship while the British Academy of Film and Television Arts also used the occasion to pay tribute to the BBC series Dr Who, which turns 50 this year.