Peter Kay’s Car Share (Goodnight Vienna for BBC One) dominated the comedy categories at The Royal Television Society North West Awards.
The show won both the Best Comedy Programme Award and the Best Performance in a Comedy prize for Sian Gibson. More than 450 industry professionals and guests attended the event at the Hilton Deansgate, which was hosted by Judge Rinder, Robert Rinder.
The RTS North West Awards recognise creative talent in the region and honour the work of production teams, writers, presenters and actors across genres including comedy, drama, factual, current affairs and kids.
ITV’s factual drama, Little Boy Blue (ITV Studios), which focused on the murder of 11-year-old Rhys Jones in Liverpool in 2007, picked up three awards – Best Single Drama or Drama Series, Best Script Writer for Jeff Pope and Best Performance in a Single Drama or Drama Series (Female) for Sinead Keenan.
The award for Best Performance in a Single Drama or Series (Male) went to Sean Bean for his role in BBC One’s Broken (LA Productions). The series’ Director of Photography, Joel Devlin, also received the award for Best Production (Craft).
Coronation Street’s (ITV Studios for ITV) Kym Marsh celebrated two awards, picking up the prize for Best Performance in a Continuing Drama and Best Continuing Drama Storyline for the ‘Michelle’s Miscarriage’ story. Hollyoaks (Lime Pictures for Channel 4) received the award for Best Use of Multiplatform for its #MyJadeIs campaign.
Nina Warhurst was named Best Regional News Journalist for BBC North West Tonight and Sunday Politics North West, while BBC North West Tonight – Manchester Bomb Compilation received the award for Best Regional News Programme.
Manchester-based production company Blakeway North picked up two awards, winning in the Best Current Affairs Programme category for Kicked Out: From Care to Chaos (BBC One) and in the Best Children’s Programme (School Age) category for My Life: Born to Vlog (CBBC).
Cat Lewis, Chair of the RTS North West Centre and CEO of Nine Lives Media, said: “We had a huge number of entries for the RTS North West Awards 2017 and the standard was, once again, extremely high. This is a reflection of the fact our region now not only hosts the second largest creative industries sector in the country, but also the second largest in the whole of Europe.
“Television drama is also continuing to enjoy a golden age, led by the amazingly talented writers and producers based in Liverpool and Manchester, and the number of programmes made in all the other TV genres continues to grow.”
