I didn’t comment on it at the time, but the best “Continuing Drama” award was given to Casualty. This was seen as a bit of a surprise at the time (As were many of the other awards – and I’m sure Ross Kemp on Gangs is good, but that good?).
As I don’t watch any of the soaps, I couldn’t tell you whether Casualty was leaps and bounds better than the others. But then I read this interesting blog post over at The Stage. Referencing another post at Broadcast it explains that in fact despite the series being “Continuing”, they’re judged on an individual episode. Now I didn’t see the episode they entered, but Scott Matthewman who has said it was very good with a somewhat higher calibre of guest star and director than normal.
Is this a fair way of measuring “Continuing” dramas. I don’t doubt that was an excellent episode. And we’ve all seen the odd powerful two-hander episodes of Eastenders over the years. But surely this award needs to be based on a minimum of say, three, episodes. And ideally they should be randomly chosen.
Having said that, every other series award is also likely to be based on a single episode submitted. Is it really that hard for the BAFTA jurors to sit down and watch the whole series of Life on Mars or whatever? Consumers seem to lap up box sets. I’d have said that once you’ve reached the shortlist, judges should have to see at least six episodes of each show. If they truly work in the industry, they’re probably watching these programmes anyway, but it’s not that onerous a task. Booker Prize judges have to read hundreds of novels after all.