Gareth Malone has become a TV star in The Choir
The Broadcasting Press Guild awards, held at the Theatre Royal on Friday afternoon, is the calendar’s most agreeable gong-giving event. The absence of TV cameras encourages an impressive guest list to let their hair down and enjoy a convivial luncheon.
The 36th BPG awards will confirm Choirmaster Gareth Malone’s standing as one of the BBC’s hottest personalities. He has been voted Best TV performer in a non-acting role and will take the Best Factual Entertainment prize for The Choir: Unsung Town.
Malone is moving from choral singing to opera for his next BBC Two show. He’s been training up a group of talented school kids to perform a modern take on the Arthurian legend at Glyndebourne. The show will air on BBC Two in June but it can’t be long before Malone becomes a face of BBC One.
Occupation, the superior BBC One Iraq serial starring James Nesbitt, has won best drama series. Occupation is trotted out by BBC bosses as the kind of quality drama it promises to focus on whilst it continues to pump out more Casualty, Holby City and glossy failures like Material Girl.
Maxine Peake, who won Best Actress for her role in The Street, might ask why BBC One can’t overcome the axe ITV has taken to its Granada production team and find a way of recommissioning the awards-laden gritty drama.
Media writers love The Thick Of It, so it’s no surprise that the political satire takes three awards. But why no election special? Was the BBC fearful of breaching neutrality obligations or, like its abandoned Ashcroft Panorama, erring on the side of caution.
The legend that is Sir Terry Wogan picks up the lifetime achievement gong, one of several he has bagged on his post-breakfast show victory lap. Sir Tel has been very generous to Chris Evans and advised his TOGs to give the new boy a chance.
Leaked figures suggest that Evans has defied the Daily Mail and increased the R2 listenership by 650,000 – that’s new, younger listeners who found Wogan a turn-off. Perhaps Sir Terry will feel less obliged to talk up his successor. After all he’s got an ego too.
Eddie Mair, Kirsty Young, Peter Capaldi, BBC Four’s Enid drama and Andrew Marr are also winners, demonstrating the public service broadcasting gulf that has opened up between the Beeb and its traditional commercial rivals.
Sky Arts deservedly receives two awards for its innovative live-on-TV theatrical plays, an idea possibly borrowed by the BBC for its EastEnders 25th anniversary special.
