“Killing Eve’s” highly anticipated second season is just around the corner, but it’s Season 1 of the spy thriller that’s getting attention today. BAFTA has announced its 2019 TV nominations, and the critically acclaimed BBC America title leads the pack with a whopping 14 nods for the main awards and the BAFTA TV Craft Awards, including Drama Series. The ceremony will see Eve Polastri and Villanelle squaring off yet again — both Sandra Oh and Jodie Comer are up for Leading Actress along with “Bodyguard’s” Keeley Hawes and “Mrs. Wilson’s” Ruth Wilson.
Series creator Phoebe Waller-Bridge is the sole woman nominated in the Writer: Drama category
Set to return for Season 2 April 7, “Killing Eve” centers on the dysfunctional, love/hate relationship between an international assassin (Comer) and the MI5 analyst (Oh) tasked with bringing her to justice.
“Killing Eve” was nearly shut out of the ceremony entirely: BAFTA “bent its own eligibility rules, which say shows ‘must have had the worldwide premiere transmission in the UK,'” to allow the show to compete, BBC explains. The series premiered in the U.S. five months prior to its debut on BBC One.
“BAFTA’s TV committee has deemed ‘Killing Eve’ eligible owing to the significant creative contribution from key talent residing in the UK both in front of, and behind, the camera,” a BAFTA spokeswoman said. “Development and post-production also took place in the UK.”
Three of the four nominees in the Breakthrough Talent category are women: director Dawn Shadforth (“Trust”), writer Georgia Christou (“Through the Gates,” an installment of “On the Edge”), and director Lizzie Kempton (“Manchester Bomb: Our Story”). All of the directors up for Director: Factual honors are men, but one of four nominees up for Director: Fiction is a woman, Mahalia Belo, who is being recognized for her work on “The Long Song.” Women dominate the Director: Multi-Camera category — all four of the projects up for the award are directed or co-directed by women: Barbara Wiltshire (“Inside No.9 Live: Dead Line”), Bridget Caldwell (“The Royal British Legion Festival of Remembrance”), Julia Knowles, Helen Scott, and Simon Staffurth (“The Royal Wedding: Prince Harry and Meghan Markle”), and Liz Clare (“The Voice UK”).
The ceremony announcing the winners of the BAFTA TV Awards and BAFTA TV Craft Awards will take place April 28 in London. Head over to Deadline to check out all of the nominees.
