Award nights are like slobbing about in your pyjamas... very nice but better done in private.

The British Academy Television Awards can claim a first this weekend as Anne Robinson becomes the first lone female to present the ceremony. It would be too much to hope that she'll bring the same snide, bitchy attitude to the celebrities hoping to collect prizes as she does towards the poor contestants on The Weakest Link.

The ceremony, which occupies two hours of primetime on BBC1, could do with something to distinguish the inevitable back-slapping, kowtowing, brown-nosing and "I'd like to thank my mother" speeches that follow as inevitably as the weather after the News at Ten.

As television, awards ceremonies are the equivalent of watching paint dry. The presenter makes a few in-jokes, someone famous announces the nominations, clips are shown, the envelope is opened, and the winner's name read out. They climb on the stage in varying degrees of joy and/or drunkeness, and make an embarrassing speech before being bundled off the platform to polite applause.

If the award is a special one - ie one being given for achieving good ratings or merely surviving to an old age - the guests may feel obliged to rise/stagger (delete where applicable) to their feet and give the person a standing ovation. As this year's recipient of an Academy Fellowship, David Jason can expect that treatment on Sunday.

Awards nights are all very nice, you just wish they'd do them in private. At least the American Academy Awards and the British film equivalent, the Baftas, offer the chance to criticise the frocks worn by those walking along the red carpet (Bush's war policy permitting, of course).

Our very own style gurus Trinny and Susannah will be devoting an entire programme on Monday (BBC1, 9pm) telling What Not To Wear On The Red Carpet as they slag off the get-ups seen at this year's Oscars. It doesn't say much for an occasion when a programme about the frocks is more interesting than the four-hour ceremony itself.

What chance do TV awards have if the Oscars can't make their bit of a do interesting after throwing bags of money and buckets of glitter at the event? Best just to read who won in the paper the morning after.

Duty, however, forces me to consider who might be as pleased as David Jason and who might look as sick as a BBC executive after seeing the ratings for The Murder Game once the winners are named. The only influence viewers can exert is by voting for the Lew Grade Audience Award, sponsored by Radio Times. Unfortunately the deadline for phone votes for your favourite programme was yesterday. The choice was between Auf Widersehen Pet, Coronation Street, EastEnders, Foyle's War and Pop Idol.

Pet, which made a triumphant return to TV after a 15-year absence, has a good chance of nabbing the best drama serial title. Oz, Dennis and the lads are pitted again Doctor Zhivago, Shackleton and Murder.

The odds favour the star of Shackleton, Kenneth Branagh, as best actor because he's also nominated for his performance in Conspiracy as Nazi Reinhard Heydrich. James Nesbitt is up for, not Cold Feet, but Bloody Sunday. The other contender, Albert Finney, has already collected several awards, including an American Emmy, for his portrayal of Winston Churchill in The Gathering Storm and offers strong competition for Branagh.

Conspiracy and Bloody Sunday are also contenders for best single drama, against Flesh And Blood and Tomorrow La Scala!.

Julie Walters had better start writing her acceptance speech. As soon as Murder debuted on BBC2, it was obvious that her portrait of a mother, distraught after the apparently motiveless killing of her son, was in line for awards. It's hard to see Sheila Hancock (Bedtime), Vanessa Redgrave (The Gathering Storm) and Jessica Stevenson (Tomorrow La Scala!) beating her.

The best comedy performance belongs to Ricky Gervais, for his comic turn as boss David Brent in The Office. Peter Kay, for Phoenix Nights, is an outside bet. The two series will also be tussling to be named best situation comedy. Again, The Office must be the favourite.

Sacked Have I Got New For You presenter Angus Deayton might well go home with the "there but for the grace of God and the News of the World go I" award for best entertainment performance (on screen, not in the hotel with the hooker). Paul Merton, for the same show, and a pair of Kumars, Sanjeev Bhaskar and Meera Syal, are other contenders.

The winner in the features section deserves to be the compelling Jamie's Kitchen, in which cheery chef Jamie Oliver risked his reputation and his money on a scheme to turn unemployed youngsters into chefs. Faking It, Lad's Army and What Not To Wear also compete for the honour.

Not one ITV show earns a place in the drama series short list. BBC1 dominates with hairdressing drama Cutting It, Clocking Off and Spooks. My favourite is the quirky Teachers, the cheeky C4 series that showed teachers as badly behaved as their pupils.

Comedy, as opposed to situation comedy, has the Smack The Pony girls up against Alistair McGowan's Big Impression, and Look Around You (about which, I confess, I can't remember a thing). Five earns its only nomination in the factual section, although a win for either David Attenborough's epic The Life Of Mammals or Simon Schama's The History Of Britain is on the cards.

ITV1's main hopes are in the entertainment and soap categories. Everyone who sat glued to the jungle adventures of Tony Blackburn, Tara Palmer Tomkinson, Darren Day and Uri Geller in I'm A Celebrity... Get Me Out Of Here will be rooting for that to win the former section. It must overcome Friday Night With Jonathan Ross, The Kumars At No 42 and Test The Nation.

The soap shortlist is notable for the absence of ITV1's popular Emmerdale and the presence of BBC1's afternoon drama Doctors. C4's Hollyoaks also gets a mention. But the battle, as it so often is in awards ceremonies, is between Coronation Street and EastEnders. The chances are that serial killer Richard Hillman's murderous exploits, which have helped the Street woo back viewers, will win over its Walford rival.

* The British Academy Television Awards: Sunday, BBC1, 8pm.

Published: 12/04/2003