For many years, the Baftas – Britain’s pre-eminent awards ceremony – has lagged behind its American cousin in terms of raw drama. Where the Oscars has had the Moonlight kerfuffle of 2017 and last year’s notorious “slap”, Baftas night has always been rather safe. Almost boring. This has been aided by the fact that, although the show has been broadcast in some form since 1956 when Vivien Leigh was hosting, it is generally aired on TV at least a few hours after news of the winners has broken. That kills both the innate tension of the prizegiving and also stifles the possibility for the sort of spontaneous carnage that has typified events at the Dolby Theatre in Los Angeles. So it was a relief to find out that the 2023 incarnation, anchored by Richard E Grant, would be sort-of, almost, not-quite broadcast live.
And when you’re in the market for carefully manufactured mayhem, who else would you go to but Alison Hammond? The Brummie TV presenter, who began her career as a contestant on Big Brother (where she was the second person evicted that season), has become famous for getting a giggling Harrison Ford drunk on mini whiskeys and knocking sailors into the Mersey on live television. She is, in a word, fun. “I feel like a competition winner,” she announced, as she took to the stage. A joke that, as the ceremony proceeded, felt closer to the bone.
