Mr Bates vs The Post Office, a hard-hitting ITV drama that spotlighted the wrongful prosecutions of subpostmasters in the Horizon IT scandal, has emerged as the front-runner in the 2025 Broadcasting Press Guild (BPG) Awards nominations. The series has been nominated for Best Drama Series, drawing attention to the miscarriage of justice that saw over 700 subpostmasters wrongfully convicted between 1999 and 2015 due to faulty technology from Fujitsu’s Horizon IT system.
The drama faces stiff competition in its category, contending with Netflix’s Baby Reindeer, Sky Atlantic’s Day of the Jackal, Disney+’s Rivals, and BBC’s Wolf Hall. The compelling portrayal of subpostmaster Sir Alan Bates, played by Toby Jones, earned him a nomination for Best Actor. Jones is up against stiff competition from Danny Dyer, nominated for his role in Rivals, along with Oscar-winners Eddie Redmayne and Sir Mark Rylance for their performances in Day of the Jackal and Wolf Hall, respectively. Lennie James is also a nominee for his role in BBC’s Mr Loverman.
Monica Dolan, who portrays fellow subpostmaster Jo Hamilton in Mr Bates vs The Post Office, has been nominated for Best Actress, while Gwyneth Hughes receives a nod for Best Writer for her work on the series. Dolan’s versatile performances have also earned her a nomination for her role in BBC’s A Ghost Story for Christmas.
Other Best Actress nominees include Jessica Gunning for Baby Reindeer, Ambika Mod for Netflix’s One Day, Katherine Parkinson for Rivals, and Anna Maxwell Martin for her multiple roles in Ludwig, Until I Kill You, and the Gavin and Stacey Christmas special.
The Best Entertainment Show category is highly competitive, with The Traitors (series two) facing off against Clarkson’s Farm, Mortimer and Whitehouse: Gone Fishing, and The Piano (series two). Meanwhile, the Best Single Drama or Mini-Series category features strong contenders, including A Very Royal Scandal, Netflix’s Scoop about the Duke of York, ITV’s Breathtaking, and Wallace and Gromit: Vengeance Most Fowl.
In the documentary category, Boybands Forever, Michael Palin: Into Nigeria, Strike: The Uncivil War, and Surviving Oct 7th: We Will Dance Again are in the running for Best Single Documentary or Mini-Series.
The audio awards also see fierce competition, with five women nominated for Best Radio Presenter: Sara Cox for her BBC Radio 2 Drive Time show, Paula Harriott for The Secret Life of Prisons, Ellen E Jones for BBC Radio 4’s Screenshot, Jenny Kleeman for The Gift, and Kate Molleson for Composer Of The Week on BBC Radio 3 and Front Row on Radio 4.
BPG Chair Manori Ravindran commented on the nominations: “Celebrating the bold, the brilliant, and the unforgettable, the 2025 BPG Awards nominations highlight the power of storytelling across television, streaming, and audio. Coveted by the industry, these awards stand apart as they are chosen independently by the experts who cover TV and audio for a living — the critics, correspondents, and writers of the UK media. We’re delighted to bring back the BPG Awards as a newly imagined evening event this year and look forward to toasting the bright lights of the industry.”
The winners will be announced at a ceremony on Thursday, March 20, in London.
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