This Isn’t Going To Hurt

It was a surprise and an honour to be invited by BAFTA to be a judge for the 2023 TV Craft Awards. Established in the year 2000, they celebrate the ‘behind-the-scenes’ categories that are often overshadowed by the main ceremony, such as editing, costume design – and in the case of the award I was judging, drama writing.

Back at the beginning of March, I joined eight fellow judges over Zoom, and we had just three hours to whittle a shortlist of twenty dramas down to four nominees and decide upon the winner. There was a lot of thoughtful, impassioned debate, as well as conflicting opinions, but I think by the end we were all very happy with our nominees: Pete Jackson for Somewhere Boy (Channel 4), Adam Kay for This Is Going To Hurt (BBC), Alice Osman for Heartstopper (Netflix), and Tony Schumacher for The Responder (BBC).

Voting was done anonymously, so we didn’t intend our nominees to all be first-time screenwriters, but it was a gratifying result nonetheless. As for our winner, that was kept a secret even from us until the envelope was opened at the ceremony. However, I wasn’t at all surprised to discover the BAFTA had gone to Adam Kay. What impressed me most wasn’t simple the seering veracity of the medical side This Is Going To Hurt. I’d expected that from someone who’d worked as a doctor in the NHS. It was how good the other elements of the drama were: the humour, the characterisation – and most especially the relationships between the characters, expecially the incredibly touching love story. This wasn’t just someone great at writing what they know; this was someone great at writing full-stop.

So huge congratulations to Adam for an extremely well-deserved win, as well as the other three nominees. You can find all the other winner and nominees HERE.

Archers Episode Wins Award

Pal Aron who plays maths teacher Iftikar Shah has won the 2013 Celebrity Champion Award from the Council For Learning Outside The Classroom.

When Freddy Pargetter was struggling with his maths lessons, his mother employed Iftikar to give him extra tuition. Recognising that Freddy was an active boy, Iftikar felt Freddy would learn more through applying maths to real-life situations he used a range of activities to help Freddy engage with maths. Together, they explored the Lower Loxley estate, looking at the geometry of buildings, solving maths problems related to horses and horse riding, and even using maths during a visit to a theme park. Within a year, Freddy had found that he quite enjoyed maths, he caught up with his peers, and no longer needed extra tuition.

On receiving his award Pal commented “I’m thrilled to receive the LOtC award. It was a joy to collaborate with director Kim Greengrass on Tim Stimpson’s script and I’m glad that the Ifty and Freddy storyline on The Archers has been recognised in this way.”

Other nominees included Dara O’Briain and Mr Tumble from CBeebies!