Review

Bafta TV Awards 2021, review: A brisk and breezy affair lacking in sentimentality 

The TV awards returned with a small live crowd alongside the (now) traditional couch-loads of nominees Zooming in via iffy connections

Best Actress winner Michaela Coel
Best Actress winner Michaela Coel Credit: Getty

The red carpet was back as the British Academy of Film and Television Arts staged a “hybrid” TV awards from London Television Centre (BBC One). “Muddled” might have been more apt as the ceremony returned with a small live audience alongside the (now) traditional couch-loads of nominees Zooming in via iffy internet connections. 

As prime-time viewing, it veered from cheerless to underwhelming and then circled all the way around. The issue wasn’t so much the mash-up of traditional award ceremony and dystopian conference call (we’re all familiar with the latter by now). The problem had more to do with the detached and ironic tone struck by host Richard Ayoade. 

His patter was clever and edgy in a slightly undergraduate way. He introduced himself as the “proud face of pandemic broadcasting” and host of the “self-esteem lottery that is the Baftas”. Yet in trowelling on the sarcasm he missed the opportunity to acknowledge that, after a year of enforced isolation, the world has finally started to open up. 

Sentimentality at awards nights is, it is true, more an American thing. However, this year the TV Baftas could have done with just a sprinkling of it: a pinch of positivity to go with Ayoade’s admittedly very funny Strictly Glum Prancing routine. 

A shadow hung over the event but for once it had nothing to do with Covid. In April, the academy honoured Noel Clarke with the award for outstanding British contribution to cinema – days before the publication of sexual harassment allegations against the actor, writer and director. The accolade was withdrawn and the TV awards were the first in Bafta’s history not to feature any outstanding contribution awards. 

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With Ayoade unwilling to go there, it was left to the winners to bring a sense of hope and positivity. They didn’t quite take up that baton. Still, had there been house to bring down, Michaela Coel might have done so as she accepted the gong for leading actress for I May Destroy You. 

She thanked the production’s intimacy co-ordinator Ita O’Brien for creating a space in which cast could work through issues around sexuality and consent without “being exploited or abused in the process”. A drizzle of applause rained down – the best that could be expected given there were just a few dozen audience members, all in socially-distanced bubbles and mostly wearing masks (one or two naughty noses could be seen poking out). 

The tone was otherwise brisk and breezy. Bill Bailey and Strictly’s Oti Mabuse danced a jive as they presented the accolade for Soap and Continuing Drama. And Bridgerton’s Golda Rosheuvel and Nicola Coughlan were saddled with dreadful teleprompter banter in which the former was required to refer to the other as “Mary Poppins”.

The gags were just as bad when This Country’s Daisy May Cooper stepped up to announce Bafta’s Must-See Moment. “Who wrote this?” she said as she plodded through a bit which it was suggested she was role-model for anyone who “can’t be arsed at school and faffs around for years”.

Paul Mescal with his Best Leading Actor Bafta
Paul Mescal with his Best Leading Actor Bafta Credit: AP

At the film Baftas several awards were announced by heavyweight stars, including Renée Zellweger beaming in from Hollywood. The closest the TV equivalent came was Catherine Zeta-Jones joining from a living room covered with huge, terrifying candy-stripe cushions. It looked like a hostage video from the lair of Alice in Wonderland cosplayers who’d finally gone too far. 

In terms of the actual winners, there were a few mild surprises but no bombshells. In Best Drama Series, Billie Piper’s I Hate Suzie lost out to Lennie James’s Save Me Too. Best actor went to Paul Mescal in Normal People, who turned bright red with embarrassment and thanked his parents. Best Mini Series was won by Coel’s I May Destroy You. However, on the day Harry and Meghan welcomed a daughter to the world there was a total shut out of The Crown, which in its most recent season chronicled the marital woes of Princess Diana. 

That’s a reasonable level of drama packed into one evening.  So why wasn’t it more exciting? Maybe it was Ayoade’s performative disdain. Perhaps the tiny audience, with their pokey noses and out of practice applause, killed the mood. Amid the Covid restrictions, it would have been going too far to expect the Baftas to be an all-singing, all-dancing, all-standing ovation occasion. But surely it wasn’t asking too much for it to be fun.

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