NewsGush: BAFTA for Brown?

So, Dot Cotton (or June Brown, if you’re one of those fools who thinks Eastenders is real) has been nominated for a BAFTA. Which is exciting.

Isn’t it?

Well – it’s nice Dot’s got some recognition, but generally I think we’ve decided that awards ceremonies are overlong, boring slag sessions in which those with no talent heap more praise on egos already tottering with adulation-overload.

Here are the main categories, and the nominees.

Best actor
Stephen Dillane – The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall (Channel 4)
Jason Isaacs – The Curse of Steptoe (BBC Four)
Ken Stott – Hancock and Joan (BBC Four)
Ben Whishaw – Criminal Justice (BBC One)

Best actress
June Brown – EastEnders (BBC One)
Anna Maxwell Martin – Poppy Shakespeare (Channel 4)
Maxine Peake – Hancock and Joan (BBC Four)
Andrea Riseborough – Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley (BBC Four)

Best entertainment performance
Stephen Fry – QI (BBC Two)
Harry Hill – Harry Hill’s TV Burp (ITV1)
Anthony McPartlin & Declan Donnelly – I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! (ITV1)
Jonathan Ross – Friday Night with Jonathan Ross (BBC One)

Best comedy performance
Rob Brydon – Gavin and Stacey (BBC Three)
Sharon Horgan – Pulling (BBC Three)
David Mitchell – Peep Show (Channel 4)
Claire Skinner – Outnumbered (BBC One)

Best single drama
Einstein and Eddington (BBC Two)
Hancock and Joan (BBC Four)
The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall (Channel 4)
White Girl (BBC Two)

Best drama serial
Criminal Justice (BBC One)
Dead Set (Channel 4)
The Devil’s Whore (Channel 4)
House of Saddam (BBC Two)

Best drama series
Doctor Who (BBC One)
Shameless (Channel 4)
Spooks (BBC One)
Wallander (BBC One)

Best continuing drama
The Bill (ITV1)
Casualty (BBC One)
EastEnders (BBC One)
Emmerdale (ITV1)

Best factual series
Amazon with Bruce Parry (BBC Two)
Blood Sweat and T-Shirts (BBC Three)
The Family (Channel 4)
Ross Kemp in Afghanistan (Sky One)

Best entertainment programme
The Friday/Sunday Night Project (Channel 4)
Harry Hill’s TV Burp (ITV1)
QI (BBC One)
The X Factor (ITV1)

Best situation comedy
The Inbetweeners (Channel 4)
The IT Crowd (Channel 4)
Outnumbered (BBC One)
Peep Show (Channel 4)

Best comedy programme
Harry and Paul (BBC One)
The Peter Serafinowicz Show (BBC Two)
Star Stories (Channel 4)
That Mitchell and Webb Look (BBC Two)

Best single documentary
A Boy Called Alex (Channel 4)
Chosen (Channel 4)
The Fallen (BBC Two)
Thriller in Manila (More 4)

Best feature
The Apprentice (BBC One)
Celebrity MasterChef (BBC One)
The Choir: Boys Don’t Sing (BBC Two)
Top Gear (BBC Two)

Best international show
The Daily Show with Jon Stewart (More 4)
Dexter (ITV1)
Mad Men (BBC Four)
The Wire (FX)

Best specialist factual
Blood and Guts: A History of Surgery (BBC Four)
Life in Cold Blood (BBC One)
Lost Land of the Jaguar (BBC One)
Stephen Fry and the Gutenberg Press: The Machine That Made Us (BBC Four)

Best current affairs
Saving Africa’s Witch Children – Dispatches (Channel 4)
Mum Loves Drugs, Not Me – Dispatches (Channel 4)
Omagh: What the Police Were Never Told – Panorama (BBC One)
Ross Kemp: A Kenya Special (Sky One)

Best news coverage
Channel 4 News (Channel 4)
News at Ten – Chinese Earthquake (ITV1)
Sky News – Canoe Man (Sky News)
Sky News – Mumbai (Sky News)

Best sport
Cheltenham Gold Cup – Denman v Kauto Star (Channel 4)
ITV1 F1: Brazilian Grand Prix (ITV1)
Olympics 2008 (BBC One)
Wimbledon – The Men’s Final (BBC One)

Best interactivity
Bryony Makes a Zombie Movie (BBC Three)
Embarrassing Bodies Online (Channel 4)
Merlin (BBC One)
Olympics 2008 (BBC One)

Are there any of those who you think, rather than being praised, should be pulled from the airwaves? Are there any on the list who drive you to exhibit psychopathic fury?

Shall we have our own awards ceremony?

One’s already started on Twitter, called The #Twaftas. How about The WWMAFTAs, 2009?

Bafta Television Awards, 2008

Sunday evening and time for some glitz and glamour. I stuck on my dinner jacket and dicky bow, turned out the lights, put out a few nibbles and took some notes on the proceedings, so we can all remember the highs of last night’s wonderful Bafta awards. What a night! What a show! What a collection of humorous acceptance speeches!

If I’m honest, I half-watched it whilst sitting in my pants and reading the paper.

Best actor
Andrew Garfield – Boy A
(Channel 4)

I didn’t watch Boy A when it went out. The only one I did watch of those nominated was Secret Life (the one about the paedophile with the elastic band). That was good and should’ve won, in the expert opinion of someone like me who couldn’t be arsed to watch all the others. The acceptance speech was a bumbling, heart-warming mess, and I wish the young bastard well.

Best actress
Eileen Atkins – Cranford
(BBC One)

Won by that woman out of Gosford Park. Again, I didn’t see Cranford. Was it any good? Was Atkins in Tenko? I think she was in Tenko.
Dame Dench was in the same thing, was nominated, but didn’t win it. Good. Give it to someone else for a change, Dench. Gina McKee should’ve won it, as she was the only one nominated who was in a programme I might actually have watched but can’t remember due to drunkenness (The Street). Plus, she was good in Brass Eye and Naked.

Best entertainment performance
Harry Hill – Harry Hill’s TV Burp
(ITV1)

Hooray! I like TV Burp. Even though – in my paranoid mind – he reads WWM and nicks some of our ideas, like Charlie Brooker and Sam Woolaston from the newspaper. Except they probably don’t.

In fact, I’d put money on the fact that they don’t.

Thank God JLC and Alan Carr didn’t win it. Amstell just missed out, which will at least give him material for his egocentric (but admittedly very amusing) gags on Never Mind The Buzzcocks.

Best comedy performance
James Corden – Gavin and Stacey
(BBC Three)

This was very strange. The bumbling chubbyman came onstage, all sweetness and light and made a lovely speech about his co-writer (her from Saxondale). He wrapped it up with ‘not funny, but true’. Emotive and nice, setting the scene perfectly for his fuck up later. I’ll get to that in a bit.

How he beat Merchant, Mitchell and Capaldi I’ll never know. I don’t watch Gavin & Stacey and from the nomination clips, I’m glad. Where the other three nominations all had clips demonstrating the quality of the comedy up for an award, Gavin & Stacey’s featured a fat man in some girls’ pants. Hmmm.

Best single drama
The Mark Of Cain
(Channel 4)

Didn’t see it. It was about war, wasn’t it? Good, good.

Also nominated were three other dramas I’ve not seen. Again – sorry.

Best drama serial
Britz
(Channel 4)

Didn’t see it. However, I now know that the main lady in it looks bloody lovely in a halter-neck frock. Apparently it was about suicide bombers and stuff.

I didn’t see any of the others and don’t know what they were about.

Best drama series
The Street
(BBC One)

I saw one of these. I definitely saw one of these. The one with David Thewlis acting as though he was a twin that had died, when he was really the twin that hadn’t died. I even reviewed it somewhere. It was good.

I didn’t see any of the Life on Mars business as John Simm makes me shudder, and I didn’t see the others, so clearly the right one won.

Best continuing drama
Holby City
(BBC One)

Napoleon’ll be happy, I thought to myself. Obviously Eastenders was robbed.

Best factual series
The Tower: A Tale of Two Cities
(BBC One)

Guess what? I didn’t see it. It looked very worthy and, if I’m honest, boring. Who wants to be bored? Not me. Should’ve featured zombies.

I’m just glad Merton being a berk in China didn’t win. And I’m even gladder that Meet The Natives didn’t win. The former because is was more about Merton than China, the latter because it was a wholesale rip off of something Donal MacIntyre did much better a few months before to little acclaim. Tribe should’ve won, because Bruce Parry is a real man. He drinks the blood of beasts and takes hallucinogens with mean men.

Best entertainment programme
Harry Hill’s TV Burp
(ITV1)

Hooray! A good choice, and Hill had the presence of mind to give us a few catchphrases rather than the faux-modesty and badly prepared gags everyone else attempted. He also beat Britain’s Got Talent and Strictly Come Dancing, the evil reality shows that give pieces of art like Britain’s Worst Teeth a bad name.

Have I Got News For You missed out but it won’t exactly hurt them given that it’ll run on and on until they’re all dead. And probably beyond, with David Mitchell and Russell Brand doing, respectively, Oxbridge intelligensia versus working class humorist.

Best situation comedy
Peep Show
(Channel 4)

Glad this won. The IT Crowd isn’t really my cup of milky tea and The Thick of It, despite excellent scipting/improvisation is an incredibly sneery piece of work. Benidorm remains unwatched, for me. I made the unqualified decision that it’d be rubbish before it started. Was I right? Anyone?

Best comedy programme
Fonejacker
(Channel 4)

Oh for Christ’s sake. Fonejacker is a tired concept. The Jerky Boys were doing this ten years ago.

Armstrong & Miller, Ponderland and Star Stories were all better.

Audience award
Gavin & Stacey
(BBC Three)

As mentioned before, I’m not bothered by Gavin & Stacey. Tucked away on BBC3, it’s off my radar like the Lily Allen show and Alexa Chung’s new vehicle ‘The Wall’. I know Corden and his skinny mate from their rubbish turn on Big Brother’s Big Mouth. Corden, arriving on stage, blurted ‘How can we win Best Comedy Performance and this, but not be eligible for Best Sitcom??’

Tumbleweed breezed through the studio. His co-writer (her out of Saxondale) told him off. Everyone went red. Even better – what was the next category? Best sitcom! ‘That’s unfortunate’, said Norton, helping to diffuse the tension.

The only point of interest all evening.

Best single documentary
Lie of the Land
(Channel 4)

Didn’t see it. It was about farmers or something.

Best feature
Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares
(Channel 4)

Oh for god’s sake. Don’t encourage the forehead-trenched, pigeon chested buffoon. We want him off our TVs, not on.

Best international show
Heroes
(BBC Two)

Not seen it. Looks rubbish. Was doing the crossword by now.

However, was amused by Alan ‘Jim Robinson’ Dale remarking that international seemed only to mean ‘American’. Good man.

Best specialist factual
Andrew Marr’s History of Modern Britain
(BBC Two)

Attempting 3 down.

Best current affairs
China’s Stolen Children – A Dispatches Special
(Channel 4)

7 across.

Best news coverage
Sky News – Glasgow Airport Attack
(Sky News)

Having a look at the Sudoku.

Best sport
ITV F1: Canadian Grand Prix Live
(ITV1)

Deciding Sudoku is too hard.

Best interactivity
Spooks Interactive
(BBC One)

Eh?

Long Service
Bruce Forsyth

Oh Christ… Bored and turning off.

*Click*

 

 

Baftas – British Academy Awards, 2008

 

Let’s face it – the Oscars are rubbish. They’re a highly-predictable, self-congratulatory backslap, filled with wailing starlets dedicating their success to God and egotistical directors believing themselves to be untouchable. Every time you have to sit through more and more tedious dance interpretations, undeserving wins and Celine Dion performances, just to find out who was the lucky recipient of the tactical voting this year. And they go on for hours… hours and hours and hours…

But they may not happen this year because of the writers strike… well, they will happen this year… but that doesn’t matter, because there’s a chance they won’t… either way, the possibility of no Hollywood red carpet this year was enough to send the American royalty scuttling over the pond for their one definite chance to wear a tux this season – the British Academy Film Awards – and thusly lent the event more kudos and importance.

And it worked too… free of the faux-worship and celebrity-deification that scuppers the Oscars each year, the BAFTAs was a relatively classy and refined affair that seemed to actually celebrate the movies and not the paychecks that come with them. And they brought it in at just over two hours, including a half hour break for the news!

The broadcast ceremony began in the best possible way by fucking up the audio link and rendering the first 10 minutes inaudible. This meant that only were we mercifully saved from Jonathon Ross’s no doubt hilarious opening monologue, but that all accompanying clips and soundbites were smeared with an ominous echoing and deep rumble – fantastic! Avant garde cinema at it’s best.

Then they fixed it and just in time to for Rambo to give the award for best British Film to This is England. Brilliant! A totally deserving win, followed by a funny and humble acceptance speech. No ego, no harrumphing, no glorious self worship – just a good film getting an award that it should have. Bring it on!

The rest of the night pretty much followed suit – big names came out and gave prizes to films that really wouldn’t get a look in at the Oscars and there was no one big winner, no one film that swept the board. It kept the event interesting and reflected the highly unusual levels of worth within this years’ nominees.

There were a few predictable wins – Daniel Day Lewis for best actor, Javier Barden for supporting actor – but the majority were unexpected, or at least wide open in a well deserved field. Marion Cotillard winning best actress for the fantastic La Vie En Rose was a terrific moment, as was the Diving Bell and the Butterfly picking up best adapted screenplay.

Atonement, the 14 category nominated super horse, only won two awards and while it was fun to see Keira’s face dropping at each loss for a while, you were really rooting for it by the end. And it won best film… which I don’t mind too much, they obviously put a lot of hard work into making a well-received film and after every other good movie had picked up and award or two it seemed only fair that Atonement should get the big one. The only sour note, really, was the producer of said film assessing their win on stage;

“well, we only won 2 and we were nominated for so many, but we got the big one and I suppose that’s the important thing”

…before going on to say how nice it was that the other films got a look in.

I never thought I’d write this post, I never thought I could write a good review of yet another fucking awards ceremony – but this year they appear to have got it right. The awards were largely just, the speeches free from excess and Jonathon Ross did himself proud – although you could tell from his face that he was itching to crack a Heath Ledger joke after the in-memoriam section.

American writers should strike more often.