The shortlist in 14 categories follows (in addition, a special award for outstanding contribution to writing is presented at the ceremony every year):

Best Long Form TV Drama
Bang, Episode 1 (Roger Williams), Line of Duty, Series 4 (Jed Mercurio), Taboo (Chips Hardy, Steven Knight, Ben Hervey and Emily Ballou)

Best Short Form TV Drama
Three Girls (Nicole Taylor), Waiting for Andre (Neil Forsyth), The Witness for the Prosecution (Sarah Phelps)

Best Long Running TV Series
Coronation Street, Episode 9251 (Damon Alexis-Rochefort), Emmerdale, Episode 7699 Inside the Mind of Dementia (Maxine Alderton), Holby City, Series 19, Episode 2 “Rocket Man” (Peter Mattessi)

Best TV Situation Comedy
This Country (Daisy May Cooper and Charlie Cooper), Back (Simon Blackwell), Inside No. 9 “The Bill” (Steve Pemberton and Reece Shearsmith)

Best Children’s TV Episode
Counterfeit Cat “Room of Panic” (Tim Bain), Counterfeit Cat “Sardonians of the Galaxy” (Ciaran Murtagh and Andrew Jones), The Worst Witch “The Mists of Time” (Nick Leather)

Best Radio Drama
Romance Is Dead (Ben Lewis), The Things We Never Said (Ming Ho), Blood, Sex and Money by Emile Zola, Season 3, Money “Reap” (Lavinia Murray)

Best Radio Comedy
Sarah Kendall: Australian Trilogy “A Day In October” (Sarah Kendall), John Finnemore’s Double Acts, Series 2, Episode 4 “Penguin Diplomacy” (John Finnemore), Kevin Eldon Will See You Now, Series 3, Episode 1 “Tarquin and the Tiny Studio” (Kevin Eldon, Jason Hazeley and Joel Morris)

Best Writing in a Video Game
Battlefield 1 (Steven Hall, Zachary Betka, Mark Bristol, Matt Gibbs, Justin Villiers, Andrew Robertshaw and Steven Bigras), Hellblade:  Senua’s Sacrifice (Tameem Antoniades), Subsurface Circular (Mike Bithell)

Best Screenplay
Miss Sloane (Jonathan Perera), Their Finest (Gaby Chiappe), The Olive Tree (Paul Laverty)

Best First Screenplay
God’s Own Country (Francis Lee), Jawbone (Johnny Harris), Under the Shadow (Babak Anvari)

Best Play
Barber Shop Chronicles (Inua Ellams), The Children (Lucy Kirkwood), The Ferryman (Jez Butterworth)

Best Play for Young Audiences
How To Be A Kid (Sarah McDonald-Hughes), The Host (Nessah Muthy), The Messenger (Mike Kenny)

Best First Novel
Towards Mellbreak (Marie Elsa-Bragg), Montpelier Parade (Karl Geary), The Bureau of Second Chances (Sheena Kalayil)

Best Online Comedy
Showreel for One Word or Less Parts (Marek Larwood), Meet the city boys secretly voting for Corbyn! (Gabriel Bisset-Smith), A Hard Brexit (Barney Fishwick and Will Hislop)

WGGB President Olivia Hetreed said: “I am enormously pleased and proud of the Writers’ Guild Award shortlists announced today. They represent the best of British writing by the best writers across the full range of dramatic and comic writing. And they are all selected by working writers in their own field. It is that judgement by your peers that makes these Awards unique and uniquely special to the winners.”

The Writers’ Guild of Great Britain (WGGB) is a trade union representing writers for TV, film, theatre, radio, books, poetry, animation and video games.  ALCS is delighted to be the lead sponsor of the awards this year because it recognises the industry in which so many of our members work. Each year we pay around £3 million to writers working within TV and Radio.

Other sponsors of the award this year include the BBC, ITV, Company Pictures, Nick Hern Books.