In an almost exact facsimile of the Royal Television Society awards earlier this year, the leading actress category throbs with talented women, three stalwarts and one wild card. Georgina Campbell, who starred in Murdered by my Boyfriend for BBC3, is definitely the outsider but a worthy nominee for her performance as a young woman in an abusive relationship. It was brutal, unflinching and a difficult watch, but Campbell’s work stands alongside Olivia Colman’s in the 2011 film Tyrannosaur in terms of commitment and detail.
Sheridan Smith has been awards-panel catnip for a couple of years now with her gutsy, heartfelt depictions of real women – and this year is no different with her nomination for Cilla, ITV’s nicely paced three-parter about the early career of Cilla Black. Anyone who saw The C Word this week on BBC1 will know she has pretty much bought a pass to next year’s list already, so the judges’ real decision is, I think, between Sarah Lancashire and Keeley Hawes. Lancashire won this face-off at the RTS awards but my vote would be for Hawes, who played the embattled Lindsay Denton in Jed Mercurio’s astonishing police thriller Line of Duty. Hawes has put in solid service over the years, but this drama saw a huge leap in her ability and the demands she placed on herself. Lancashire does tend to win everything – and rightly so – but I would like to see her come second to Hawes on Sunday.
The Honourable Woman picked up almost no nominations (Stephen Rea is the only on-screen talent in with a shot for best supporting actor) despite garnering huge critical acclaim and featuring a performance of exquisite stillness and control from Maggie Gyllenhaal as Nessa Stein, the heroine of the piece. Her turn as the newly appointed baroness with a tragic past divided audiences. I loved it unreservedly despite understanding only about a third of the political and economic manoeuvring that was going on; others found her smug and emotionless. But I’m still surprised that an awards jury didn’t go for it – it doesn’t feature in the drama-series or mini-series categories at all, with Hugo Blick’s astonishingly spare writing passed over entirely.
And now my real gripe: why isn’t Rosie Cavaliero nominated for best supporting actress for her role in Prey? Her omission is ridiculous. While the list does include Gemma Jones’s beautifully judged performance in Marvellous (which I think should and will win), I’m agog at how Charlotte Spencer, a member of the Glue cast – E4’s rural murder mystery, which didn’t quite take flight for me – can be voted in ahead of Cavaliero. (I am aware this is getting repetitive.) Vicky McClure was undoubtedly brilliant in Line of Duty and she has won a Bafta before for her work on Shane Meadows’s This is England trilogy, but I have only see her do one thing so far – albeit extremely effectively. And Amanda Redman put in solid work as the wronged wife of Tommy Cooper in Not Like That, Like This but, again, the spoils should go to someone who has really pushed themselves.
Cavaliero is more used to appearing as someone’s wife in a sitcom; she was superb in Hunderby, Jam & Jerusalem, Saxondale and a zillion others. But in Prey, Chris Lunt’s tense, gut-wrenching drama about John Simm’s cop going on the run after his family is slaughtered, she was just exceptional. Gone was the mousey hausfrau and this hard-bitten, obsessive, intensely complicated woman arrived on screen, easily matching Simm in their turbulent scenes together. I can’t wait to see what she does in series two, but I am gutted to see her ignored this Sunday.
In the comedy category, the annoyingly good Olivia Colman is nominated for her patient forbearance as Alex, the vicar’s wife in Rev. No mere adjunct to the main man, Tom Hollander, she is given plenty of meat to tuck into as she struggles with work ambitions, home life, parenthood and the various parishioners who use her home as an unofficial Citizens Advice Bureau. She is always a strong contender, but Jessica Hynes’s horribly dense PR executive Siobhan Sharpe, from W1A, is also likely to get the jury’s attention just for the sheer consistency of tone and an almost Les Dawson-like ability to hit the bum notes of intelligent conversation.
