Unlike their film award cousins the small-screen championing BAFTA Television awards seem to be carried out with an air of slight embarrassment and knowing cynicism. Television has had something of a bad time of late but the lo-fi treatment given to congratulations suggest the 'lesser relative' is not given much respect even along the corridors of the Academy.
With Graham Norton's many double entendres and jokes seeming to fall very flat - poking fun at a clearly nonchalant Jonathan Ross merely underscored the sense of the BBC being somewhat the old boy's club - the awards themselves needed to carry interest. Curiously for a medium shadowed by the problematic fervour of producers wanting to ignore the actual will of the televoting public, BAFTA allow one award to be given from the telephone and email votes of the general viewing constituency. With great irony the winner of this 'public award' - grandly labelled and sponsored "Phillips Audience Award" - went to the teen sex drama Skins, clearly the result of tech savvy voting teens rather than the will of many millions of viewers who watch such rivals as The X Factor, or Coronation Street.
The Academy could have made safer choices than the unexpected winner of the audience vote but seemed to have been placing themselves in the same spoiler mindset as those ballroom fans who ensured John Sergeant kept clod-hopping around BBC One's Strictly Come Dancing. Given the mood building behind veteran Eastenders actress June Brown for her Talking Heads style maudlin monologue BAFTA chose the lesser known Anna Maxwell Martin for her role in Channel 4's Poppy Shakespeare. As he seemed to admit in his acceptance speech, Harry Hill was the lesser and somewhat bizarre choice for another (third, would anyone credit it) trophy for Best Entertainment Performance. This clumsily all encompassing award is for, shall it not be forgotten, fronting a clip show of television highlights.
There may be only kind of programme to make a person laugh - comedy - but BAFTA manage to split the genre into three. Is it possible to explain how a Situation Comedy (won by The IT Crowd for Channel 4) is justifiably split from sketch shows (disgracefully awarded to the under performing and outdated Harry and Paul on BBC One)? Were BAFTA so willing to give only the best a place in their record books such differences would not be artificially carved. The third fork for celebrating comedy gave David Mitchell - agreeably one half of a comedy duo in The Peep Show - an award greeted with gritted teeth and embarrassment.
Far too often the concept of the award show is questioned but such industry back-slapping maintains at least the justification for those lesser known shows getting continued funding. It should be celebrated whenever Mad Men (tucked away on BBC Four and winner of the whimsically named Best International Show award) or White Girl (for BBC Two) gives necessary praise to lesser known producers and stars. However the overall sensation coming from the programme, which like so many televised award shows carried self-congratulation over the threshold of comfort for an ordinary audience to enjoy. With so few awards going to the expected recipient the British Academy possibly hoped to keep the audience watching through a contrived suspense. Ultimately the whole exercise just seemed somewhat lacklustre and disappointing, and how else has the very worst of television been described over these last twelve months?
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