Irish writer Graham Linehan's Channel 4 comedy, The IT Crowdwon an Emmy at an awards ceremony in New York last night.
The programme, which stars Irish actor Chris O'Dowd took, the best comedy award at the International Emmy Awards.
Linehan, the writer and director of the show, has written for some of Britain's most popular comedy shows over the last 15 years but is best known as the co-creator of
Father Ted.
It was a good night for the BBC and Channel 4 with the former's
Life on Marsscooping the best drama series award and the latter's
Strictly Bolshoiclaiming the arts programming Emmy.
Shaun the Sheepwon for best children's and young people's programming.
David Suchet and Lucy Cohu won the top acting honors - Suchet for his performance as the crumbling media mogul Robert Maxwell in the BBC's
Maxwelland Cohu for
Forgivenas a suburban housewife who discovers her husband is sexually abusing their daughter.
Argentina took home one of the 36th annual awards' top prizes, for best TV movies or mini-series, for
Television Por La Identidad, which tells of the country's "disappeared" pregnant women from 1976 to 1983, and their subsequent search for their children.
Mountaineering tragedy
The Beckoning Silencewas named best documentary.
The Founders Award was presented to Dick Wolf, creator of the long-running and prolific "Law & Order" franchise, which has recently spawned "Law & Order: London."
Jordan won the first-ever telenovela Emmy for
The Invasion Igtiyaha love story set amid the Israeli military's 2002 operations into West Bank cities.
The Emmy for best non-scripted, or reality show, went to The Netherlands'
The Big Donor Show, a controversial program based on a hoax about people vying for a dying woman's donated kidney. The woman was not really dying and the program was aimed at pointing out problems with organ donation laws.