BAFTA CEO on TV Awards Noms, Female Directors, and Why It’s “a Good Time to Be a Couch Potato”

BAFTA CEO Jane Millichip , the former Sky Studios chief content officer and chief commercial officer, says Thursday's nominations for the 2025 BAFTA Television Awards reflect the health and strength of the U.K. TV industry's creative output.

"The British TV sector is in rude health, creatively and in terms of craft production quality," she tells The Hollywood Reporter . "The range of the styles and genres and the depth of the quality is really on display here. And we have quite a lot of first-time nominees, particularly in the performing categories, which is really refreshing. Almost half the [contenders in the] performing categories are first-time nominees, including some surprising names, such as Jonathan Pryce and Danny Dyer."

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Netflix hit series  Baby Reindeer  leads the nominations for the  2025 BAFTA Television Awards  and the  BAFTA  Television Craft  Awards , unveiled on Thursday, with eight, followed by  Disney+ series  Rivals , Apple TV+ hit  Slow Horses  and ITV's  Mr Bates vs the Post Office  with six nods each.

Millichip also highlights the diversity of offerings in the drama space. "We have big, meaty stories of societal change, such as Mr Bates vs The Post Office and Baby Reindeer , big zeitgeisty subjects and some beautiful TV adaptations of great books, such as Wolf Hall and One Day ," she notes. "And I'm really pleased to also see a volume drama nominated for best drama series, Blue Lights . It's it's all too easy to overlook volume drama, but it takes enormous skill and talent to maintain great quality."

How about the diversity of talent onscreen and behind the scenes? "The only demographic question we ask for entry is gender, but I think you can see, particularly from the performance nominations, that there's probably about the same ethnic diversity of previous years," Millichip tells THR . "It's really notable that half of the nominated directors are women. That's an area we've been paying attention to to ensure that the work of women directors is seen by more people. It's not for us to tell anybody how to vote. But the one thing we can do is ensure that our voting members see the full spectrum of talent out there."

While funding challenges have held up some U.K. TV productions, Millichip is bullish on the state of the sector. Concludes the BAFTA CEO: "It's a good time to be a couch potato."

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