The Sarah Jane Adventures has won the award for Children’s Drama at the 2010 Royal Television Society programme awards!

As previously reported, the Doctor Who spin off was up against Tracy Beaker Returns in the category, but was awarded the prize at the ceremony which took place at the Grosvenor House Hotel in London this evening. We’d just like to say a big congratulations to the cast and crew on their well-deserved achievement!

“Emotional and incredibly engaging – a wonderful drama that stands on its own as a terrific piece of storytelling. The cultural diversity of the cast, its high production values and creative storyline made it a joy to watch and kept you intrigued.”

Sarah Jane and the gang will be back on CBBC later in the year for their fifth series.

Elsewhere, Doctor Who’s showrunner has been awarded The Judges’ Award.

The Judges’ Award is given for an outstanding contribution to television, and there are few screenwriters in the world whose work boasts the same incredible range as tonight’s recipient. Equally at home with horror, detective stories, situation comedy, action adventure and sci-fi, this year’s winner is an author in the truest sense of the word. With a vocation encouraged by his father, his first foray into television arrived in the form of the awarded and still iconic children’s drama series Press Gang. (The first and last time he needed a leg-up from anyone but not the last time he would call on a family member for help). With a clear comic ability and an already-proven knack for seeing the insane and ironic in ordinary life, tonight’s winner forged a highly accomplished career in situation comedy during the 90s, paving the way for his most successful original comedy to date, Coupling - regarded by many as a paradigm for near-perfect comic writing and storytelling. Sitcom, it would turn out, was the perfect warm up for tackling two of the biggest icons in British fiction in his most recent works: Sherlock and Doctor Who. Channeling all that he had learned about structure into shaping mind-bendingly brilliant sci-fi and thriller plots, as well as placing a funny man/straight man pairing at the centre of extraordinary and impossible circumstances, with his friend Mark Gatiss he invited an entirely new audience to claim Holmes and Watson as their own. And in his downtime reinventing Doctor Who to overwhelming critical and ratings success from the get-go. There are few writers who would trade Steven Spielberg and Hollywood to work with the Daleks in Wales but this man did. Indeed, with a seemingly inexhaustible resource of utterly distinctive plots and the ability to use comedy liberally to form a devoted connection with the audience, our winner is living, typing proof of why television remains THE writer’s medium.”