Britain’s Stephen Dillane and the Netherlands’ Bianca Krijgsman won the top acting prizes on Monday night at the 42nd International Emmy Awards in which the honours were spread among eight countries.
The highlight of the awards gala at the Hilton New York came when Mad Men stars Christina Hendricks and John Slattery presented the honorary International Emmy Founders Award to the show’s creator and executive producer Matthew Weiner who’s preparing the final episodes of the advertising agency saga to air in spring 2015.
British TV productions received three International Emmys at the ceremony hosted by British comedian Matt Lucas, creator of the comedy series Little Britain.
Dillane, best known for portraying Stannis Baratheon in Game of Thrones, won for his role as a veteran British detective in the Anglo-French crime drama The Tunnel. Dillane’s character teams with a female French detective to hunt down a serial killer who left the bodies of a French politician and British prostitute in the middle of the Channel Tunnel.
The British conspiracy thriller Utopia received the award for best drama series. The series is about a group of comic-book fans who are pursued by a secretive murderous organisation after they discover an unpublished manuscript for the sequel to a cult graphic novel rumoured to predict global catastrophes. HBO has ordered an American adaptation to be directed by David Fincher (Gone Girl).
The other British winner was Educating Yorkshire, a glimpse into modern school life in a diverse community in northern Britain, for non-scripted entertainment.
Krijgsman was chosen best actress for her role in De Nieuwe Wereld (The New World) as a disgruntled cleaner at an airport immigration centre who forms an unexpected relationship with a West African asylum-seeker.
Telemundo’s El Senor de los Cielos (The Lord of the Skies), loosely based on the life of a powerful Mexican drug lord who died after undergoing plastic surgery to change his appearance, won the Emmy in the newly created category for non-English language US primetime programmes.
The telenovela award went to Brazil’s Precious Pearl, the story of a girl who may be the reincarnation of a Buddhist spiritual leader.
Germany’s controversial Unsere Mutter, Unsere Vater (Generation War), about five friends from a Berlin neighbourhood whose paths diverge amid the horrors of the Second World War, won in the TV movie/mini-series category.
Belgium’s irreverent What If? 2 took the Emmy in the comedy category for its sketches on such topics as “What if Jesus was a standup comedian?”
In the documentary category, Sweden’s Frihet bakom galler (No Burqas Behind Bars), about inmates in an Afghan women’s prison, took the Emmy.
The Emmy for arts programming went to Canada’s The Exhibition, which describes the public opposition faced by an artist mounting an exhibition of paintings based on a police poster of missing women, 26 of whom were found murdered on the farm of Canada’s worst serial killer.
News Corp. and 21st Century Fox chief Rupert Murdoch joined Brazilian telenovela stars Gloria Pires and Milton Goncalves to present the honorary International Emmy Directorate Award to Roberto Irineu Marinho, chairman and CEO of the Globo Group of Companies, Brazil’s leading media and entertainment conglomerate. His father founded TV Globo, which celebrates its 50th anniversary next year.
The awards, presented by the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, were created to honor excellence in television programming outside the US.
