Britain’s Stephen Dillane and the Netherlands’ Bianca Krijgsman received the top acting prizes at the 42nd International Emmy Awards.
A highlight of the awards gala in New York came when Mad Men stars Christina Hendricks and John Slattery presented the honorary International Emmy Founders Award to the show’s creator Matthew Weiner who is preparing the final episodes of the advertising agency saga to air in spring 2015.
British TV productions received three International Emmys at the ceremony hosted by British comedian Matt Lucas, creator of the comedy series Little Britain.
Dillane, famous for portraying Stannis Baratheon in Game of Thrones, won for his role as a veteran British detective in the Anglo-French crime drama The Tunnel.
His character teams up with a female French detective to hunt down a serial killer who left the bodies of a French politician and British prostitute in the middle of the Channel Tunnel.
The British conspiracy thriller Utopia received the award for best drama series.
The series is about a group of comic-book fans who are pursued by a secretive murderous organisation after they discover an unpublished manuscript for the sequel to a cult graphic novel rumoured to predict global catastrophes.
The awards were created to honour excellence in television programming outside the US
HBO has ordered an American adaptation to be directed by David Fincher, who has just completed the Hollywood blockbuster Gone Girl.
The other British winner was Educating Yorkshire, a glimpse into modern school life in a diverse community in northern England, for non-scripted entertainment.
Krijgsman was chosen best actress for her role in De Nieuwe Wereld (The New World) as a disgruntled cleaner at an airport immigration centre who forms an unexpected relationship with a West African asylum seeker.
Telemundo’s El Señor De Los Cielos (The Lord of the Skies), loosely based on the life of a powerful Mexican drug lord who died after undergoing plastic surgery to change his appearance, won the Emmy in the newly created category for non-English language US primetime programmes.
Germany’s controversial Unsere Mutter, Unsere Vater (Generation War), about five friends from a Berlin neighbourhood whose paths diverge amid the horrors of World War II, won in the TV movie/mini-series category.
News Corp and 21st Century Fox chief Rupert Murdoch joined Brazilian telenovela stars Gloria Pires and Milton Goncalves to present the honorary International Emmy Directorate Award to Roberto Irineu Marinho.
He is chairman and chief executive of the Globo Group of Companies, Brazil’s leading media and entertainment conglomerate.
The awards, presented by the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, were created to honour excellence in television programming outside the US.