The production team behind HBO’s blockbuster “Game of Thrones” will be given the BAFTA Special Award at this year’s British Academy Television Craft Awards.

Hannah Murray and John Bradley from the hit series will collect the award on behalf of the team. BAFTA said the accolade is recognition of the boundaries that have been pushed across all areas of production in the making of the fantasy epic.

Filming is underway on the eighth and final six-episode season of “Game of Thrones,” which will air in 2019. HBO is working on several potential spinoffs.

The award also recognizes the support that “Game of Thrones” has provided for high-end TV production in the U.K., BAFTA said. The show has filmed across various locations in Northern Ireland and set up a production headquarters at Titanic Studios in Belfast, the Northern Irish capital, which has been a base for the series since the pilot.

Speaking on behalf of the production team, executive producers D.B. Weiss and David Benioff said in a statement: “Many, many people work insanely hard to create any film or television show. They are creators every bit as much as actors, writers, producers or directors, and deserve to be recognized as such.”

“The craft behind what is one of the most popular dramas of our time is nothing short of incredible, from the breath-taking location shots to the intricately designed costumes and set pieces, and not forgetting the level of detail from the makeup and prosthetics team, to name a few,” added Krishnendu Majumdar, chair of BAFTA’s television committee. “Huge congratulations to everyone involved.”

The BAFTA Craft Awards take place on April 22 in London. They will be live streamed on YouTube and Twitter. [Source]

When Kit Harington was a schoolboy in Martley, Worcester, in the late ’90s, he liked to tell friends the truth about Bonfire Night. It wasn’t Guy Fawkes, he’d say, who was the brains behind the Gunpowder Plot of 1605. It was a devout Catholic from Warwickshire called Robert Catesby.

He was the one who devised the plan to blow up Parliament, wipe out King James I and, in so doing, the ruling Protestant elite. Guy Fawkes was just one of the plotters. The question of why Fawkes is etched into the mythology of 5 November, and not Robert Catesby, is a personal one for Harington: he is a distant relative.

‘My middle name is Catesby and it’s something I was proud of,’ he says. ‘It’s a part of my family history.’

Harington went on to find fame as Jon Snow in the HBO series Game of Thrones (where he also met fiancée Rose Leslie; the couple announced their engagement last month). But he never forgot his relative. And now, more than 400 years after his death, Harington has, in his own way, led a campaign to ensure that we don’t either.

Gunpowder is a three-part BBC One drama developed by Harington (he also plays Catesby), written by Ronan Bennett (the screenwriter and novelist best known for TV crime-drama series Top Boy) and directed by J Blakeson (The Disappearance of Alice Creed). Continue reading  »