Bafta TV Awards 2021: 4 biggest talking points, from Michaela Coel’s wins to technology fails

The Bafta TV awards returned on Sunday (6 June) night for its second mid-pandemic show hosted once again by Richard Ayoade.

Despite its simple set-up, the show still managed to surprise, with wins in tough categories from Sex Education’s Aimee Lou Wood and Small Axe’s Malachi Kirby.

However, the night’s biggest prizes came with little shock, with Michaela Coel and Paul Mescal walking home with awards in the Leading Actor categories for I May Destroy You and Normal People respectively.

You can find the full list of winners here.

Diversity win fan-voted award

The Virgin Media Must-See Moment award is the only prize of the night voted for by the public. With tough competition from Bridgerton, The Mandalorian and, erm, Nigella Lawson saying “micro-wavé”, the award was eventually given to Britain’s Got Talent stars Diversity for their Black Lives Matter-inspired routine. Troupe leader Ashley Banjo used his speech to point out the abuse the group had received for the performance (which received nearly 30,000 Ofcom complaints), but ultimately thanked their critics for showing “exactly why this performance and this moment was necessary”.

An awards show with an audience (sort of…)

Whereas last year’s Bafta ceremony saw Ayoade host to an empty auditorium, this year’s event had something closer resembling the crowds we miss. However, with the masked nominees sat in pairs with considerable distance between them, the whole thing felt a bit eerie and lacklustre. But the small scale did allow for some great moments, such as Bradley Walsh shouting that Romesh Ranganathan’s win was a “farce” and Ranganathan replying: “Shut up Bradley.”

Michaela Coel’s emotional winners speech

Michaela Coel won twice for I May Destroy You – once for Mini-Series and once for Leading Actress. During her second speech, the last of the night, the actor singled out the show’s intimacy co-ordinator Ita O’Brien for “making the space safe” while working on a project specifically about consent. “I know what it’s like to shoot without an intimacy director – the messy, embarrassing feeling for the crew, the internal devastation for the actor,” she said. “Your direction was essential to my show.”

Technology fails us once again

Well, it wouldn’t be a mid-pandemic award show without a Zoom malfunction, would it? Yep, more than a year in, we’re still seeing winners with bandwidths that just can’t withstand the pressure of an entire nation watching at home. A number of speeches looked blurry, while the beginning of Casualty’s speech for Soap and Continuing Drama was cut off. Truly no better way to remind us that no, the pandemic’s not over just yet.

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Bafta TV Awards champion diversity as Michael Coel triumphs for I May Destroy You