Stacey Solomon and Hannah Waddingham win TV awards

Stacey Solomon, Hannah Waddingham and Bella Ramsey were among the winners at the Royal Television Society Awards.

BBC drama Time picked up two prizes at the event in London, and true-crime series The Sixth Commandment won three awards including best male supporting actor for Éanna Hardwicke.

Kane Robinson was named best male leading actor for Top Boy, which was called “the best show on Netflix” by the NME when it ended in September.

And Happy Valley won best drama series.

The BBC crime thriller’s final season was 2023’s second most-watched programme, with 10.6 million viewers.

Sarah Lancashire was nominated for best female leading actor for her role as police sergeant Catherine Cawood, but lost out to Tamara Lawrence, for Time, which tracked the lives of three women arriving at a prison on the same day.

On the red carpet, Lawrence told BBC News: “Time is about understanding the context of how those women came to commit the crimes they did.

“Often criminality is framed as an issue of morality rather than the implications of the society we live in.”

Ramsey won best supporting actor – female, also for Time.

Eurovision co-host Hannah Waddingham, who won best entertainment performance, told BBC News: “The aftermath of Eurovision has been so fun and unexpected and I am so jealous of the people doing it this year – what I would give to be doing it again.”

She has high hopes for the “fabulous” Olly Alexander and said the UK was “lucky to have him representing us” and he “absolutely stands a chance of winning”.

The entertainment award was won by Squid Game: The Challenge, a spin-off of the South Korean dystopian drama. It saw 465 people compete for $4.56m (£3.66m), thought to be reality TV’s biggest cash prize.

Stephen Lambert, the chief executive of the studio that produced the programme as well as The Traitors, Race Across the World and Gogglebox, received the outstanding achievement award.

Gbemisola Ikumelo and Hammed Animashaun won the female and male comedy performance awards for Black Ops, in which they play hapless community-support officers recruited to work on a Met Police undercover operation.

On the red carpet, they said it was a “delicate balance trying to make a show that had comedy, a hint of drama and a bit of social commentary”.

The series’ overall message was “the underdogs can win”, Ikumelo said.

“This is the story of the people that you think aren’t important, that you overlook because of the way they look, the colour of their skin or the work they do,” she said.

“Sometimes you might underestimate these people – but they are actually really important.”

In total, the BBC won 21 awards across 30 categories at Tuesday’s ceremony, which was hosted by comedian Tom Allen.

BBC chief content officer Charlotte Moore said: “The wins speak to our unwavering commitment to backing the very best British storytelling and recognised our ability to bring people together, which will be so important to us going into the future.”

Full list of RTS Awards