British Academy Television Awards

Griping about the state of British television never goes out of fashion, but the line-up for this year’s Bafta Television Awards ought to silence a few critics. Any year that has produced work as brilliantly diverse as Grayson Perry’s C4 series on class, Alan Partridge’s tour of Norwich for Sky Atlantic, Simon Russell Beale’s Falstaff (in BBC2’s ‘The Hollow Crown’) and the deeply moving documentary ‘7/7: One Day in London’ must be hailed as a good one.

Savile aside, sport and current-affairs departments mostly excelled themselves in an incident-packed 2012 while Olivia Colman’s annus mirabilis is acknowledged by the possibility of a remarkable double, with deserved nominations in both comic and dramatic categories. Bafta wouldn’t be Bafta without a couple of inexplicable omissions – and the total absence of Jed Mercurio’s fine police thriller, ‘Line of Duty’, is a doozy.

But we’re falling into the trap: while behind-the-scenes revelations might have been distinctly unsavoury, this has been a year in television – on screen at least – that’s well worth celebrating.