This weekend will see some of the UK’s finest television talent going head to head for the Best Drama award at the Baftas, the most coveted gong in British telly. Blue Lights, Sherwood, Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light, Supacell: one of these shows will join the pantheon of previous winners.
It’s a list that not only provides a guide to how television has evolved in the years since the early 1970s (when the award moved to rewarding a single project, rather than the oeuvre of a specific creative), but also a very nourishing diet for potential TV consumption. Here, then, are the top 20 winners of the Bafta’s Best Drama award. I make no apology for recency bias, as many of the winners from the 1970s and 1980s are almost impossible to find now, demonstrating the capacity of television to be both energising and ephemeral.
