Ross, Brown & Branagh Among BAFTA Nominees, Awards Held 4/26

The nominations were announced today for the British Academy Television Awards. Hosted by Graham Norton and broadcast on BBC One, the Awards will be held for the first time at the Royal Festival Hall on Sunday April 26, 2009.

Jonathan Ross, Ant & Dec, Stephen Fry and Harry Hill battle it out for Entertainment Performance

First-time nominations for The Friday/Sunday Night Project, The Wire and Celebrity MasterChef.

June Brown who plays Dot Cotton in EastEnders receives her first-ever BAFTA nomination in the Actress category for her ground-breaking solo episode of the BBC soap, nearly half a century after making her TV debut in 1960 and twenty years since a ‘soap' actress, Jean Alexander, last appeared in this category (for her portrayal of Hilda Ogden(1)).

 

She faces previous BAFTA winner Anna Maxwell Martin for Poppy Shakespeare, and first time nominees Andrea Riseborough for Margaret Thatcher: The Long Walk to Finchley and Maxine Peake for Hancock and Joan.
For his portrayal of the eponymous Hancock, Ken Stott, last nominated almost a decade ago,(2) is recognised in the Actor category against first time nominees Jason Isaacs for The Curse of Steptoe, Ben Whishaw for Criminal Justice and Stephen Dillane for The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall.

Jonathan Ross, who was not nominated last year, returns with his fifth personal nomination in Entertainment Performance for Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, and is joined by last year's double winner Harry Hill for Harry Hill's TV Burp, Anthony McPartlin and Declan Donnelly for I'm A Celebrity...Get Me Out Of Here! and Stephen Fry who receives his fifth BAFTA nomination for QI and his seventh overall. Fry is also nominated in Specialist Factual** for Stephen Fry & the Gutenberg Press: The Machine That Made Us, up against Blood and Guts: A History of Surgery, Lost Land of the Jaguar and Life In Cold Blood.
In Features, Jeremy Clarkson goes head-to-head with Sir Alan Sugar as Top Gear faces The Apprentice. They are joined by The Choir: Boys Don't Sing (the sequel to previous BAFTA winner The Choir) and first time-nominee Celebrity MasterChef.
The Friday/Sunday Night Project also gets its first BAFTA nomination this year, in the Entertainment Programme* category, facing last year's winner Harry Hill's TV Burp, QI and previous winner X Factor.

David Mitchell receives two individual nominations; one for Peep Show, garnering him recognition in the Comedy Performance category alongside Rob Brydon for Gavin & Stacey, Sharon Horgan for Pulling and first time nominee Claire Skinner for Outnumbered.
His second nomination comes for That Mitchell and Webb Look in the Comedy Programme category which goes up against last year's nominee Star Stories and newcomers The Peter Serafinowicz Show, and Harry and Paul. Peep Show also features in the Situation Comedy category, against previous nominee the IT Crowd and newcomers Outnumbered and The Inbetweeners.

EastEnders receives its tenth nomination in Continuing Drama since the creation of this category in 1998(3), and is joined by The Bill, and previous winners Casualty and Emmerdale.
In the International category, the cult hit The Wire, receives BAFTA recognition and is joined by fellow debutants Dexter, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart and Mad Men.
Kenneth Branagh(4) receives his first nomination as a producer and his sixth overall BAFTA nomination in film and television for Wallander in the Drama Series Category. He faces a trio of previous winners in Spooks, Shameless and Doctor Who. Completing the drama categories, and with a hat trick of nominations following Actor and Actress nods, Hancock and Joan lines up against Einstein and Eddington, The Shooting of Thomas Hurndall and White Girl in Single Drama .

The Zombie genre spawns two nominees this year; one for Charlie Brooker's Dead Set in the Drama Serial category alongside Criminal Justice, The Devil's Whore and House of Saddam, whilst, BBC3's Bryony Makes A Zombie Movie competes with BBC One's Merlin, BBC Sport's online treatment of the Beijing Olympics and Channel 4's Embarrassing Bodies Online in the Interactivity category.
In the Factual arena, previous BAFTA winner Ross Kemp has garnered two nominations; the first is in the Factual Series category for Ross Kemp in Afghanistan,(5) up against Amazon with Bruce Parry, Blood Sweat and T-Shirts in which six fashion victims experience working in an Indian clothes factory and The Family which documents 21st century family life over an unbroken period of 100 days. His second is in the Current Affairs category for Ross Kemp: A Kenya Special, which competes with Panorama's Omagh: What The Police Were Never Told and two Dispatches films, Saving Africa's Witch Children, and Mum Loves Drugs, Not Me.

In News Coverage, for the first time, Sky News receives two nominations in this category, for its ‘Canoe Man' coverage of the disappearance and reappearance of John Darwin, who was thought to have drowned at sea in 2002 and its coverage of the Mumbai terrorist attacks. It faces competition from Channel 4 News and ITV News At Ten's coverage of the Chinese Earthquake.

In Single Documentary*** the competition is fierce. The heart-lifting A Boy Called Alex follows the 16-year-old Etonian choral scholar Alex Stobbs and his determination to conduct Bach's Magnificat while suffering from cystic fibrosis. Its fellow nominees are Brian Wood's powerful documentary Chosen which presents the stories of sexual abuse by teachers in the 1960's at the Caldicott Prep School as re-lived by three former pupils, Thriller In Manila which explores the iconic, thrilling 14 round final clash between Joe Frazier and Muhammad Ali in 1975 and, the final nomination in this category, the moving feature-length documentary The Fallen which personally chronicles the 300 British troops who have died in Iraq and Afghanistan over the last eight years.

The Sport category sees Channel 4's Cheltenham Gold Cup compete with ITV's Formula One Brazilian Grand Prix (in its final year of broadcasting the competition), the BBC's Olympics coverage, and Rafael Nadal's historic victory over Roger Federer in Wimbledon 2008 - The Men's Final.
The nominations for this year's only publicly-voted Philips Audience Award for the Programme of the Year will be announced shortly.

The British Academy of Film and Television Arts supports, develops and promotes the art forms of the moving image by identifying and rewarding excellence, inspiring practitioners and benefiting the public.

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