Ben, Smith receive best actor awards

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Ben Whishaw and Sheridan Smith pose with their awards in London—AFP

Ben Whishaw was named best actor at Britain’s top TV awards on Sunday, cementing his status as one of the UK’s new leading men after starring in the James Bond movie Skyfall, while a satire lampooning London Olympic organisers won two awards.

Whishaw, 32, who is currently performing with Judi Dench in London’s West End theatre district, won the award for playing Richard II in a TV film based on William Shakespeare’s play that was commissioned by Britain’s public broacaster, the BBC.
“I’m really, really surprised. I was just hoping it would be one of the others just so I wouldn’t have to come up here and say anything,” Whishaw, the gadget guy Q in Skyfall, told a star-studded ceremony at London’s Royal Festival Hall. The award for best actress at the British Academy Television Awards went to Sheridan Smith for playing the wife of the great train robber Ronnie Biggs in ITV’s Mrs Biggs. She beat the bookmaker’s favourite Sienna Miller, nominated for playing the American actress Tippi Hedren with whom Alfred Hitchcock was said to be obsessed, in the drama The Girl co-produced by the BBC and Time Warner’s HBO.
The biggest winner of the night was the BBC comedy programme Twenty Twelve about organisers of the 2012 Olympics, which won best situation comedy and nabbed the award for best female in a comedy programme for actress Olivia Colman. Colman also won best supporting actress for Accused. Another Olympic show, The London 2012 Paralympic Games on Channel 4, won the prize for best sport and live event.
The prize for best single drama went to Murder by Danish director Birger Larsen who also made the hit Nordic TV thriller The Killing, while the best drama went to Last Tango in Halifax about teenage sweethearts reunited 60 years on. HBO show Girls, a comedy-drama about a group of 20-somethings in New York, won the international award, beating the Danish crime drama The Bridge, the post 9/11 psychological drama Homeland.