Sean Bean Wins RTS Award For Cross-Dressing Role In 'The Accused' PA | Posted: 20/03/2013 09:09 GMT | Updated: 20/03/2013 09:23 GMT (HUFF POST0

Tough screen star Sean Bean's portrayal of a cross-dressing teacher has landed him a best actor title at the Royal Television Society Programme Awards - one of two prizes for courtroom drama 'The Accused'.

Sean Bean as Tracie, attracting the attention of Tony (Stephen Graham)

TV REVIEW: Sean Bean In Fine Form As Transvestite Tracie In Jimmy McGovern's 'Accused'

Posted: 15/08/2012 10:44 Updated: 15/08/2012 11:44

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As it happened, I ended up caring deeply for him, both as the brave, indomitable Tracie, and as the heartbreakingly lonely Simon, in the first of Jimmy McGovern's four-part drama examining the British justice system.

Simon was a man we could all relate to - undervalued at work in his classroom, consoled by literature at home, this was a tragic, timeless everyman, except this being Jimmy McGovern and 2012, his only solace was transforming himself into Tracie and hitting in the town in a frock.

Sean Bean in Simon mode, betrayed by his secretly married lover

Although Tracie's breasts were a little cartoonly pneumatic, Bean has revealed in recent interviews that he also realised in them great statements of power, and this became clear as he fought off derisive comments and stares from all around. He may have been lonely and fearful, but he was no victim.

READ MORE OF THE AUGUST REVIEW OF SEAN BEAN IN THE ACCUSED


READ MORE FROM TODAY'S HUFF POST ARTICLE

Why Detective David Tennant is a prime-time suspect British murder dramas Mayday and Broadchurch have helped bring event television back from the grave, by Libby Brooks The Guardian,

Life's a beach for police officers David Tennant and Olivia Colman in Broadchurch. Photograph: Patrick Redmond

Who wants to think about murdered children on a weekday evening? A fair few of us, if the ratings are anything to go by. This week BBC1 and ITV have gone head to head with new crime dramas Mayday and Broadchurch: both with decorated casts and nuanced scripts that lift them above the standard police procedural; both previewed as the kind of event television that can seem antediluvian in an age of download and bargain box sets.

Mayday, which tracks the disappearance of 14-year-old Hattie as she is about to take the part of May Queen in her village's annual parade, stars Sophie Okonedo, Aidan Gillen and a fabulously overwrought Lesley Manville. It launched on Sunday – the first of five consecutive nights – with 6.2 million viewers and a 25% audience share; but lost out the following evening to the first of eight weekly installments of Broadchurch, which began with 6.8 million and a concurrent gush-in on social media. Coincidentally, both series are made by Kudos, the production company behind Spooks and, most recently, the bizarrely brilliant Utopia.

It has already been suggested that Broadchurch detectives David Tennant and Olivia Colman, investigating the death of a local boy in the eponymous seaside town, owe a debt to the Nordic noir plotlines that have dominated quality crime drama of late – although the scenery of Dorset's Jurassic coast, where the series was filmed, could give any fjord a run for its money, and, as Tennant proved on Monday night, it is difficult to be entirely sombre when you're eating a 99 ice cream.

READ MORE: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/mar/05/tennant-prime-time-suspect-mayday-broadchurch