Two of Britain’s biggest stars won top honors at the BAFTA TV Awards on Sunday: Timothy Spall finally prevailed in the Best Actor race after three previous bids while Sarah Lancashire collected a bookend Best Actress award for the third and final season of “Happy Valley”; she’d won for season 2 back in 2017 and has a supporting prize for “Last Tango in Halifax” as well.

Backstage, Spall readily admitted, “I’m over the moon about this. I just am. So often the bridesmaid, today I catch the bouquet.” He then pondered the importance and meaning of awards ceremonies. “When you keep losing them, you think they’re a load of bollocks. And then you win and you think well, actually… Really, I suppose, in a way, they are both — they’re magnificent and they are an in-house thing. But it’s a profession — a dodgy, shaky, insecure profession that occasionally celebrates itself,...