According to Bafta publicity, 66% of the performance nominees for this year’s TV awards are first-timers. It points out that this continues the academy’s aim to honour newer and broader talent, including Channel 4’s We Are Lady Parts, about a Muslim punk band – but, overall, the prizes are strikingly dominated by three great figures from TV’s baby boomer generation.
There are a combined 17 nominations for It’s a Sin (many of them to young actors) and Time – dramas created respectively by Jimmy McGovern, 72, and Russell T Davies, 58. The latter is the same age as Graham Norton, who already holds five Baftas and is once again double nominated as presenter and producer of a series that, as it heads towards its 500th edition, competes only with Michael Parkinson’s to be the greatest ever British chatshow.
