The BAFTA Awards won’t stream the final four categories live this year, the producers have confirmed.
The star-studded ceremony, which will be hosted by former Doctor Who David Tennant, will be broadcast as-live on the BBC with a two-hour delay.
The footage will then be edited down by an hour to make for a 120-minute run-time. It will also be available to watch on the BBC’s streaming service iPlayer and internationally on streamer BritBox.
Last year, for the first time ever, the show ran with its usual two-hour delay but the final four categories were broadcast live, meaning audiences at home got to watch in real time as Austin Butler picked up the award for best actor for “Elvis,” Cate Blanchett received a best actress gong for “Tar,” Emma Mackey won the Rising Star award and “All Quiet on the Western Front” was crowned best film.
“Every year we look at the show differently,” BAFTA awards director Emma Baehr told Variety. “We’ve tried lots of different things. Last year we went live… We’re not going to be doing that this year. We tried it. It was good at the time, but it didn’t add any more than what we needed.”
Last year’s BAFTA ceremony had the highest ratings — an average of almost 4 million — since 2019 as well as the usual handful of viral clips and snafus: a lost-in-translation moment saw Carey Mulligan accidentally announced as the winner of the best supporting actress award instead of the actual winner, “The Banshees Of Inisherin” actor Kerry Condon, while Ariana DeBose’s rap about the best actress nominees quickly went viral and best comedy actress winner Siobhan McSweeney’s politically charged statement was cut from the BBC’s broadcast, causing some controversy online.
Lee Connolly, creative director of production company Penny Lane Entertainment, who are producing the awards show, pointed out that although audiences at home will watch an edited version with a slight delay, there are no do-overs in the room. “In effect it is live,” he said. “Just because we’re a couple of hours ahead of time, you can’t change anything, you can’t stop, you can’t reset. And we would never do that anyway because you don’t want anybody in the room, in the audience, to feel as though they’re making a TV show. They’re not, they’re there to enjoy an awards ceremony. And it’s our job to then take that and make that feel that it’s for the viewer.”
The BAFTA Film Awards take place on Feb. 18 at the Royal Festival Hall in London.
