On 11 May 2025, Britain’s most prestigious television awards ceremony, the EE BAFTA Film Awards, will take place at the Royal Festival Hall in London. So which of the nominated shows do you really need to make sure you’ve watched? Check out our guide below to the 10 most essential shortlisted shows, and where you can stream them in the United Kingdom.
Mr Bates vs The Post Office
Not just a great true-life drama but a full-blown cultural and political phenomenon, Mr Bates vs The Post Office brought an appalling scandal to a wide audience and ensured something would be done. Leading Actor nominee Toby Jones is Mr Bates: that’s Alan Bates, a sub-postmaster who repeatedly complains to the Post Office that their accounting software is leading to false accusations of dishonest accounting. When he realises there are many such cases across the country, he bands other victims (including Jo Hamilton, played by Leading Actress nominee Monica Dolan) together in a rousing tale about ordinary people helping each other to fight injustice.
Baby Reindeer
The most-talked about drama of the year, starring Leading Actor contender Richard Gadd as a version of himself, and Supporting Actress candidate Jessica Gunning (who is in it so much she could really have been shortlisted for Leading Actress) as the stalker who causes life-changing chaos. When struggling stand-up comedian Donny takes a job as a barman in a London pub, he humours the strange behaviour of regular customer Martha, but quickly becomes embroiled in a bewildering, scary relationship that Martha will not let him end. Gadd’s willingness to reveal incredibly intimate details about his own emotions and behaviour made Baby Reindeer a massive word-of-mouth hit.
Slow Horses
Across its four seasons, more and more viewers have found their way to Slow Horses, the smartest and funniest spy drama on TV. In large part that’s thanks to a fantastic lead performance from Leading Actor nominee Gary Oldman as Jackson Lamb, the filthy, obnoxious boss of Slough House, an MI5 spin-off staffed by failed and rejected agents. But there’s a fine ensemble too: Christopher Chung might be an outside bet for Supporting Actor for his portrayal of wisecracking computer genius Roddy, but he can be taken as representing the whole of the supporting cast. Season four, which starts with a bombing and ends with a big reveal about one of the Slough House stalwarts, is one of the best.
Rivals
Viewers came to the Jilly Cooper dramatisation expecting a fabulous 1980s-set romp, full of outrageous characters, hilarious sex scenes and a general air of ridiculous English upper-class debauchery. That’s exactly what Rivals gave them, with David Tennant leading the way, and scoring himself a Leading Actor nomination, as extremely nefarious TV mogul Lord Baddingham. But the show has some heart to it as well: the unexpected highlight of the first season is a tender forbidden romance between two characters in loveless marriages, played by Danny Dyer and Katherine Parkinson. For playing Lizzie Vereker, Parkinson is up for the Supporting Actress prize.
Gavin & Stacey: The Finale
When the BAFTA shortlists came out, one show dominated the conversation, not for the nominations it got but for the lack of them. The last ever episode of Gavin & Stacey broke ratings records on Christmas Day 2024, with more than 19 million Brits enjoying it, but somehow it isn’t on the list for Scripted Comedy and its only acting nomination is Ruth Jones for Female Performance in a Comedy. There is, however, a nod for the last episode’s pivotal scene: Mick (Larry Lamb) standing up at Smithy’s wedding to tell him he is making a mistake and should marry Nessa instead has a chance of being named this year’s Memorable Moment.
Shogun
It’s not a British show, so Shogun is only nominated for the International prize at the BAFTA TV Awards, but it should have a solid chance of winning its category. The mostly subtitled story of an English sailor who is shipwrecked off Japan in 1600 and becomes part of a power struggle among the local feudal lords, Shogun might sound to the uninitiated like a slog, but it is anything but: epic romance, brutal action scenes and a surprisingly dry sense of humour combine to make it addictive and rewarding. It has already cleaned up at the Screen Actors Guild Awards, the Golden Globes and the Emmys.
Say Nothing
Shogun’s strongest challenger in the International category is this ambitious drama, based on the best-selling book by Patrick Radden Keefe. A sprawling history of the Troubles in Northern Ireland, Say Nothing focuses on the 1972 murder of Jean McConville and the 1973 bombing of the Old Bailey in London, and has drawn some criticism for moments where the execution of those crimes comes across as thrilling heroism. But when viewed as a whole, the series is a subtle and complex picture of conflict, aided by great performances: for playing Provisional IRA member Dolours Price at different times in her life, Lola Petticrew and Maxine Peake are nominated for Leading Actress and Supporting Actress respectively.
Hell Jumper
The most astonishing documentary of 2024? Hell Jumper commemorates the short but incredible life of Cornwall resident Chris Parry, who left home when Russia invaded Ukraine in 2022 and died in Ukraine in 2023. Parry joined a band of unaffiliated humanitarians who took it upon themselves to rescue stranded civilians from the warzone: they would receive a message with the location, jump in their car and drive towards the horror before posting videos of their adventures online, shooting the footage as they went with body-mounted cameras. The intensity of those images is matched by the sensitivity with which the film handles some difficult questions about why the Hell Jumpers were willing to take such risks.
Mr Loverman
The cast of this superb BBC drama have received the recognition they deserve from BAFTA: while Sharon D Clarke and Ariyon Bakare are worthy nominees for Leading Actress and Supporting Actor, the defining performance in Mr Loverman is by Leading Actor contender Lennie James. In a drama based on Bernardine Evaristo’s novel, James plays Barrington, an Antiguan-born Londoner who has a wife (Clarke) and children, but who has for decades been secretly in love with his male best friend Morris (Bakare). James is spectacularly good as a man who has sacrificed his own happiness in order to do what he assumed was the right thing, but who now is not so sure.
Wolf Hall: The Mirror and the Light
It may not have had quite the impact of the original Wolf Hall back in 2015, but the long-awaited sequel, again based on Hilary Mantel’s magnificent historical novels, is an equally fine piece of work, nominated both in the Drama category and in the Supporting Actor shortlist for Damian Lewis’s portrayal of Henry VIII. Once again, Thomas Cromwell (Mark Rylance) has to manage an extremely delicate situation, this time in the aftermath of the execution of—spoiler alert—Anne Boleyn. Political intrigue has never been presented in such a fluidly intelligent manner as this, and no drama on the planet is better performed.
Check out our guide below on where to watch all the top EE BAFTA TV Awards nominees, streaming in the United Kingdom!
