They were staged in New York and called the International Emmy Awards, but last night’s lavish ceremony could well have been mistaken for a British awards evening after Life on Mars, The IT Crowd and thespians David Suchet and Lucy Cohu all won gongs.

Brits took seven of the ten prizes awarded, with Suchet winning Best Actor for his role as the formidable Mirror proprietor Robert Maxwell, in biopic Maxwell, and Cohu taking the Best Actress title for her harrowing role in sexual abuse drama Forgiven.

The lauded Life on Mars added to its impressive haul of awards by picking up the Best Drama gong for a second time, while cult hit The IT Crowd won Best Comedy.

Fizzing with patriotism backstage at the New York Hilton Hotel, Suchet, 62, said: “It’s been an unbelievable night for the Brits. I’m absolutely thrilled to bits, I can’t believe it’s really true.

“This is my first Emmy ever, and I can’t tell you what it feels like to win for England because it’s international, and to represent my acting community as well.”

“The fact that this [Maxwell] should win is amazing, and I am still gobsmacked. Having won an award like this, it’s the most extraordinary feeling and I am so very happy.”

An equally excited Cohu, 37, said: “It was absolutely fantastic. I can’t believe it.”

The actress’s performance in Forgiven was described as “faultless” when it screened on Channel 4 in August but the drama made for harrowing viewing. Cohu played a mother who reported her husband to the police for sexually abusing their daughter, but then took him back.

Last night, she said: “This was such a small film - we shot it in two weeks with no money, it was a really important story so it’s about that, the importance of something being recognised.

“This is the first award I’ve won. You don’t do this for awards, but they do open doors.”

The British winners kept coming as Strictly Bolshoi, which told the story of English choreographer Christopher Wheeldon’s journey to create an original work for Moscow’s famed Bolshoi Ballet, won the Arts Programming award. Shaun the Sheep won the Children & Young People gong for its mischievous tale of a flock of sheep who exasperate the sheepdog assigned to watch them. The Beckoning Silence, which depicted a mountaineer’s tragic battle for survival on the Eiger in the Swiss Alps, won Best Documentary.

Britain left three gongs and a special award for the remaining 15 countries competing. Law & Order star Sam Waterston presented the International Emmy Founders Award to renowned producer Dick Wolf, while the controversial Dutch hoax-reality programme, The Big Donor Show, won the Emmy for Non-scripted Entertainment.

The show made headlines around the world when producers announced that a terminally ill woman would decide on television which one of three patients in need of a transplant would receive her kidney.

It later emerged that the show was a stunt intended to pressure the Dutch government to reform organ donation laws and that the woman was not dying of a brain tumour.

Jordan’s Al-Igtiyah (The Invasion), a love story about a Palestinian caught up in the chaos and destruction of the large-scale 2002 Israeli military incursion into the biggest West Bank cities, won the newly-established Telenovela gong and Argentina’s Television por la identidad won in the TV movie/mini-series category.

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