Jimmy McGovern

Jimmy McGovern bags prizes at RTS Midlands Awards 2021

The Liverpool-born author took the Script Writer award for his BBC One prison drama Time while its star, Sean Bean, picked up the Performance in a Drama prize.

McGovern’s drama Anthony, made by LA Productions for BBC One, which tells the story of a racist murder of a teenager and the life he could have lived, secured the Single Drama award.

Channel 4 Aids drama It’s a Sin, written by Russell T Davies and made by Red Production Company, took the Drama Series prize.

Stephen Graham and Sean Bean to star in new BBC One drama Time

Time explores the two sides of the penal system, the punishers and the punished, and how prison affects all who pass through.

Mark Hebden (Bean), teacher, husband and father, welcomes a four-year jail sentence for killing an innocent man in an accident, having been consumed by the guilt.

Bean said: “Getting to be involved in a Jimmy McGovern drama again is a real privilege and it will be great to be reunited with Stephen.

"Mark Hebden is another of Jimmy’s complex and superbly written characters and I am looking forward to bringing him to life on screen.”

Sheridan Smith and Alison Steadman to star in new Jimmy McGovern drama Care

Sheridan Smith, RTS, Awards, 2015,

Based on Juckes’s real-life experiences, Care follows Jenny (Smith) a single mother of two, raising her children with the help of her widowed mother Mary (Steadman). When Mary suffers a devastating stroke and develops dementia, Jenny’s world falls apart, and everything changes for her and her sister Claire (Keenan). Torn between caring for her mother and following her own path, Jenny soon discovers that there could be another option, but it’s one she’ll have to fight for.

Winners of the RTS Programme Awards 2018 announced

Anita Rani picked up the presenter award (Credit: RTS/Richard Kendal)

The RTS Programme Awards, chaired by Wayne Garvie, honours excellence across all genres of television programming and recognise exceptional actors, presenters, writers and production teams, as well as the programmes themselves.

The BBC scooped 17 awards for its programmes and talent, and also won the coveted RTS Channel of the Year award.

Colin McKeown: "If you throw a stick out a window in Liverpool you won't hit a writer, you'll hit two."

For a long, long, long time the problem with being a TV producer in Liverpool was very simply that there was no one to trade with. In other words, there was no TV culture.

I’m happy to say that I was one of the founding fathers of a show that ignited a new TV culture. Brookside began on 2 November 1982 at 8:00pm on the channel that gave birth to independents, which was, of course, Channel 4.

Hill sweeps to the top

Polly Hill

In a smooth transition, the personable Polly Hill has become the BBC’s new Controller of Drama Commissioning. She takes over without so much as dropping a script from LA-bound Ben Stephenson.

Her new job is one of the most coveted and powerful positions in UK television. Hill is responsible for the wide range of drama across BBC One and BBC Two, an estimated budget of £200m annually, spiced with the challenge of devising a new online policy, principally for BBC Three. She also has oversight of EastEnders, Casualty and Holby City.