Great expectations for TV awards

Great expectations for TV awards
Great expectations for TV awards (Image credit: PA Wire/Press Association Images)

BBC1 drama Great Expectations leads this year's Bafta TV Craft Awards, honouring behind-the-scenes talent in programme-making. The adaptation, which starred Gillian Anderson (pictured) and Ray Winstone, is up for seven awards. Another BBC1 period drama, Birdsong, a love story based on the best-selling Sebastian Faulks novel, has five nominations, including best writer for screenwriter Abi Morgan, while BBC1's David Attenborough-narrated series Frozen Planet is up for the same number of gongs. Appropriate Adult, the ITV1 drama starring Dominic West as serial killer Fred West, is in the running in four categories, including best writer. BBC1 drama Sherlock, starring Benedict Cumberbatch and Martin Freeman, is up for three awards, including best writer for Steven Moffat. ITV1's Downton Abbey, Channel 4's inner-city drama Top Boy, and BBC2's psychological thriller The Petal And The White also have three nominations each. The BBC's Royal Wedding coverage, ITV1's The X Factor, Terry Pratchett's Choosing To Die, and The Hour, both on BBC2, have two nominations apiece. The British Academy Television Craft Awards take place in London on May 13.

Patrick McLennan

Patrick McLennan is a London-based journalist and documentary maker who has worked as a writer, sub-editor, digital editor and TV producer in the UK and New Zealand. His CV includes spells as a news producer at the BBC and TVNZ, as well as web editor for Time Inc UK. He has produced TV news and entertainment features on personalities as diverse as Nick Cave, Tom Hardy, Clive James, Jodie Marsh and Kevin Bacon and he co-produced and directed The Ponds, which has screened in UK cinemas, BBC Four and is currently available on Netflix. 

An entertainment writer with a diverse taste in TV and film, he lists Seinfeld, The Sopranos, The Chase, The Thick of It and Detectorists among his favourite shows, but steers well clear of most sci-fi.