Comer, Bean, Macfadyen win at Britain’s BAFTA TV awards

LONDON (Reuters) – Actors Jodie Comer, Sean Bean and Matthew Macfadyen were among the winners at the British Academy Television Awards in London on Sunday night.

Bean won the leading actor prize for prison drama “Time”, which also scooped the award for mini-series. Comer, who rose to fame playing an assassin in “Killing Eve”, won leading actress for “Help”, a drama set in a care home during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Her co-star Cathy Tyson won supporting actress while supporting actor went to Macfadyen for “Succession”, a show about power struggles within a U.S. family media empire.

Coming-of-age story “In My Skin” won the drama series category, while U.S. mini-series “The Underground Railroad”, an adaptation of Colson Whitehead’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel about a Black slave’s quest for freedom, won in the international category.

Female performance in a comedy programme went to Sophie Willan for “Alma’s Not Normal” while Jamie Demetriou won male performance in the same category for “Stath Lets Flats”.

Veteran comedian and actor Billy Connolly was awarded the BAFTA Fellowship, the highest accolade given by the academy.

Rapper Big Zuu won two awards – entertainment performance and features for his show “Big Zuu’s Big Eats”.

Several winners used their acceptance speech to voice support for publicly owned but commercially funded broadcaster Channel 4, which the British government last month announced plans to sell.

(Reporting by Marie-Louise Gumuchian; editing by John Stonestreet)