An episode of a crime series set in Maribor was the most watched content made for Slovenian TV audiences last year, followed by a documentary on a 1980s fundraising campaign for Slovenian skiers.

The first episode of season 2 of The Cases of Inspector Vrenko, a crime series based on the novels by Avgust Demšar, attracted 274,000 viewers last year, to take one of the Orion Stars awards, handed out annually by audiovisual works rights organisation AIPA.

The documentary on Podarim-Dobim (I Gift, I Win), a charity raffle and fundraising campaign for Slovenian skiers and other athletes that kept people glued to the TV screens between 1984 and 1997, recorded 209,000 viewers.

Meanwhile, third place went to an episode of the third season of In the Name of the People, a crime drama series revolving around a young lawyer, which attracted 200,000 viewers.

All top three winners were produced by the public broadcaster RTV Slovenija.

As the awards were presented at the AIPA ceremony in Ljubljana on 24 May, the judging panel also honoured Mojca Funkl for her acting performance in In the Name of the People, and Kaja Podreberšek and Gaj Črnič for their contribution in portraying the main characters in the Christmas film The Beanie.

The AIPA competition, dedicated to popular domestic content broadcast on cable TV, also spotlights works that may not be the most watched but shine through with their engagement and originality.

The Butnskala awards, named after an iconic late 1970s radio play, went to the host of Televizorka, an RTV Slovenija show about films, series and documentaries, Miha Vipotnik, for writing and directing the documentary-fiction film Wracked Piano, and Janez Burger for directing the feature film Observing.