The award for worst awards show

In The Oscars (BBC2, Tues) the commercial breaks came even more thick and fast than the awards for The English Patient. The viewer had a job to work out whether the ads were interrupting the awards or the awards interrupting the ads. Not that any commercials sullied the BBC's coverage. While America went off to be sold vile drinks and quality footwear, Britain was asked to invest in the idea of Barry Norman sitting in a corridor pretending to be competent at live links. This year's Oscars were a personal disaster for Ole Bag Eyes, what with Billy Crystal purloining all the acid asides he might have made in other years, and some star presenters rather awkwardly joining the parade of self-parody. No matter that Norman's review show recently notched up its quarter century, one lesson you took away from this year's broadcast is that Baz likes to do more than one take.

So it can't have been a tough decision to know what to cut when paring the live event down to half its size for the slimline highlights version in Film '97 (BBC1, Tues) (which of course Norman, with time to hone his words, introduced and closed with a delivery as smooth as a baby's bottom). Out went the who-cares awards for documentaries no one has ever heard of. And it was goodbye to all the bits where Norman, like that old toothless heckler from The Muppet Show, asked his guest pundit from Newsweek, "How are you feeling about the evening so far?"

It seemed hugely unfair that while the stars down on stage showed how tough it is to read off an autocue, this is the one night of the year when Norman has to work without one. You do wonder about the intelligence of actors sometimes. The English Patient cleans up, its producer Saul Zaentz bags a special gong and then Al Pacino comes on to announce the Best Picture and attributes it to someone called Saul Zannet. Presumably, as a method presenter, he couldn't say the name correctly without first making minutely extensive researches into the work of independent film producers. An appropriate comeuppance would involve Zaentz announcing a best actor nomination for Al Paniro.

It was no different over at the Empire Film Awards (ITV, Sat), a low- budget, independent, open-neck, paraplegic-free and frankly irrelevant British awards ceremony to Tinseltown's studio-backed, black-tie, wheelchairs- welcome, unabashedly competitive monolith. You'd have thought Matt Dillon would have it in him to remember the name of the scriptwriter from Seven who accepted the Best Picture award. But no, he had to produce a prompt sheet to get it right second time. Which probably tells you all you need to know you about how highly Americans esteem scriptwriters (and, indeed, scripts).

There's something inescapably feeble about British award ceremonies, partly because we're so behind on the cinema calendar that some films up for nomination were in the running for Oscars a year ago. Empire's decision to raise an arbitrary frontier between British and "international", a coy euphemism for "American", also led to the inevitable no-show of all "international" victors. While smacking of positive discrimination in a year when British film talent for once needs no sympathy, the separation also gave rise to needless confusion. One of the "best British directors" had made an American film. Accepting his award as "best American director", Terry Gilliam protested that he'd always thought he was British. Next year, The English Patient will presumably wreak further havoc, bringing nominations for some individuals in the domestic category while the film itself competes against "international" contenders. Very much a case of The Empire Falls Flat.

The lack of Hollywood studio movies in either award show can ultimately be laid at the door of George Lucas, who invented the risk-free thrill- fest that plays fast and loose with plot and character. The re-release of Star Wars prompted assessments of his work at both ends of the intellectual spectrum. Star Wars Trilogy: The Magic and the Mystery (ITV, Sat) was the low-rent, bought-in free plug voiced-over by Mr Cinema himself, Eamonn Holmes. George Lucas: Flying Solo (BBC1, Sun) was the highbrow, ironic encomium from Omnibus. It would be nice to think that The English Patient will help reverse the sea-change caused by Star Wars and revive the brainy blockbuster. But that's about as likely as an American accepting an Empire in person.