The BBC picked up 13 awards at the Royal Television Society’s Programme Awards 2017, including Channel of the Year for BBC Three.
Hosted by new Great British Bake Off presenter Sandi Toksvig, the Awards honour excellence across all genres of television programming and recognise actors, presenters, writers and production teams as well as the programmes themselves.
Following on from her win at the Broadcasting Press Guild Awards on Friday, Fleabag writer and star Phoebe Waller-Bridge received the Breakthrough Award and also picked up the prize in the Writer – Comedy category. Asim Chaudhry won the Comedy Performance Award for his role in People Just Do Nothing and the series also won for Scripted Comedy; while the Single Drama award went to Murdered By My Father.
Sophie Okonedo picked up the Actor (Female) Award for her role in BBC One drama Undercover. Happy Valley was named Best Drama Series, while the show’s writer Sally Wainwright collected the Writer – Drama award. Wainwright also received the Judges’ Award for being a writer of outstanding distinction.
Channel 4 won nine awards at the event. Robbie Coltrane received the Actor (Male) award for his role in National Treasure and the series also won the Mini-Series category. Grayson Perry received two awards for Grayson Perry All Man, in the Presenter and Arts categories, while Adam Hills, Alex Brooker and Josh Widdicombe took home the Entertainment Performance award for The Last Leg. Other awards collected by Channel 4 included Daytime Programme for Find It, Fix It, Flog It; Live Event for Stand Up to Cancer; Science and Natural History for First Contact: Lost Tribe of the Amazon and Sports Programme for Rio Paralympics.
Ant and Dec’s Saturday Night Takeaway won in the Entertainment category; while Emmerdale was named the winner in the Soap and Continuing Drama category, it’s second win in as many years.
The Lifetime Achievement Award was presented to Julie Walters.
Other winning programmes included: The Murder of Sadie Hartley for Single Documentary and The Aberfan Young Wives’ Club for History. BBC Two’s Exodus: Our Journey to Europe won in the Single Documentary category, while Employable Me won the Popular Factual and Features Award and the Sports Presenter, Commentator or Pundit prize went to Osi Umenyiora for his work on Race to Super Bowl 50, NFL This Week and The NFL Show.
