With Emmy voting that starts in two days and goes through June 24, it is time to again confront the old TV academy truth: Emmy voters are creatures of habit.
While Oscars has renewed its membership over the past decade, brought in more international voters and produced a number of best -nominated and winners who would once have been unthinkable, the TV Academy has adapted to the changing television landscape by remaining to a large extent predictable.
Yes, it is progress that voters embraced the predominantly Japanese linguistic series “Shōgun” last year, but no one was really surprised when it happened. Like an aircraft, the TV Academy is huge – more than 26,000 members – and it won’t be easy.
Still, one can hope for some changes this year. Before voting, here is my modest wish list for the 77th Primetime Emmy Awards.
Pleasant surprises of some kind
We know that shocks tend to be few and far between when Emmy nominations are announced. But there have been some satisfactory (about mild) ones in the drama categories too late: “slow horses” that break through during their third season last year, “Mr. & Mrs Smith” who sneak in for their first season and “The Boys” proving that Emmy voters can actually find space for superheroes.
The good news this year is that only one of last year’s outstanding drama series nominated, “slow horses”, is justified again, so voters have to look elsewhere. The bad news is that many previously nominees return to the race, so that slate can still be filled with shows that have been here before.
The consensus favorites that enter nominations seem to be previously nominated “Andor”, “The Last of Us”, “Severrance”, “Slow Horses” and “The White Lotus”; New show “The Pitt”; Second annual program “Diplomat”; And another three series from which the eighth and last nominees will be selected, “Paradise” (New), “Squid Game” (formerly nominated) and “The Handmaid’s Tale” (former winner). You can get a strong range from that list, but even a couple of minor upsets would help.
In the outstanding comedy series, in the meantime, four previously nominated (“Hacks” and “The Bear”, which has won, and “only murder in the building” and “Abbott Elementary”, which has three noms each but no winnings) seems insured for repeated nominations, while “what we do in the shadows can” easily land land. (“Cobra Kai” seems less likely to get his second nom four years after it became its first, but who knows?)
Together with the recurring nominees, there are plenty of new challengers, from the first -year challengers “The Studio”, “Nobody Want This”, “A Man on the Inside”, “The Four Seasons” and “Agatha all the time” to the second season of “shrinking” and the fourth and last season of “The Righteous Gemstones.” So surprises seem at least possible.
An impressive viewing of broadcasting networks
The broadcast network dominated the program categories for decades, but it was a long time ago. While the last decade has seen one or two broadcasts show nominees in the Top Comedy category every year except one, the drama category has been dominated by streamers and cable.
Over the past ten years, Netflix and HBO have received almost half of all outstanding nominated drama series (48.7%, to be accurate), while the NBC’s “This is US” has been the only broadcast drama series nominated in the category. Given last year’s results in each category, about 140 nominations went to the drama series. Only two of them, both for stunt coordination, were for broadcasts.
It is probably fruitless to expect another broadcasting series to crash the top category this year, although the “food lid” can dream. But it would be nice if the networks that have given us actors from “Matlock”, “Elsbeth”, “High Potential”, “Will Trent” and others can get some love from voters this time. For the sake of ancient times, maybe?
A slightly crazy mix in the category TV movie
In recent years, the category of outstanding TV movie gets my voice as the strangest big Emmy category. It is the category where a stupid movie about Pop-Tarts can go up to a tense drama about sexual abuse, where a sequel to “Predator” is nominated together with a sequel to “Hocus Pocus”, where movies made for the big screen may end up winning awards for TV, as long as they can pass Dolly Party’s last Christmas girl.
The Last Five Years of the Category Have Seen A Bewilding Variety of Nominees That Includes Broad Comedies (“Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,” “Quiz Lady” and Jerry Seinfeld’s “Unfrosted”), Movies that Went to movie festivals, Film festivals, Adaptations of Plays (“American Son,” “Oslo”), Sequels to hit Films (“PREY,” “HOCUS POCUS”), More Dolly Parton (“Dolly Parton’s Heartstrings: These Old Bones,” “Dolly Parton’s Mountain Magic Christmas (” ” 911! The Hunt for Qanon, ““ Zoey’s extraordinary Christmas, “Mr. Monk’s Last Monk Movie,” “El Camino: A Breaking Bad Film,“ “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmid: Kimmy Vs The Pastor”.
This year’s field includes the usual Potpourri, including “Bridget Jones: Mad About The Boy”, the small town crime movie “Rebel Ridge”, the first “Star Trek” TV movie, a little horror and many other things. And is it any surprise that in early April swung the category by revealing that the Emmy-winning creator of “Succession”, Jesse Armstrong, would qualify in the category this year for the movie “Mountainhead”, which had not even stopped shooting at the time it was announced?
So all I ask is that in the strangest category we get a slate of nominees that are at least a little strange.
Actors from more than five programs in the supportive actors
This has been a problem in Emmy’s actor categories in recent years, which I have written many times in this space. Once the amount of TV content has exploded, voters have increasingly turned to increase acting nominations on a small number of shows, with the supporting drama categories a special focus on category hoging.
Last year, the 14 who supported the Drana nominations went to just five shows: seven for “The Morning Show”, three for “The Crown”, two for “Shōgun” and one for “Slow horses” and “The Gilded Age.” The year before, the 16 nominations went to just four shows: “The White Lotus” got nine, “Success” got five and “The Crown” and “Better Call Saul” got one each. In the supportive comedy cities, things were marginally better, with six shows that shared 12 nominations last year and seven show that claimed the 14 noms the year before.
Given the potential dominance of “The White Lotus” in drama this year, I would guess that if someone took odds on the number of different show represented in the category, would be above/below land somewhere around 5.5. In the comedy bye, the presence of possible several nominated from “Abbott Elementary”, “The Studio”, “Shrinking”, “Hacks” and “Bear” would not make that number much higher. I would not necessarily bet on, but I really wish it.
Is it too much to ask? Come back on July 15
A version of this story will appear in the Drama issue of Thewrap’s Awards Magazine.
