Emmy Watch: Best Lead Actress in a Drama Series

Our team is breaking down the top contenders in all the major races and highlighting some of our favorites over the next few weeks.

 

By Abe Friedtanzer 

This category is an interesting one because it includes only three past nominees who were all eligible last year, but only one of them was nominated. In a much more open field than ever before, it’s the right time for those who have missed out in crowded years to return again and for a few new faces to break through, especially since past winners like Claire Danes and Viola Davis can’t stage surprise returns because their shows are now over. We all know that last year’s nominee Olivia Colman (The Crown) will be back, and she’ll be joined by her season four costar Emma Corrin (Princess Diana). Beyond that, little is certain. Let’s take a look…

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Emmy Watch: What new shows will join the Best Drama Series lineup?

Emmy nominations are closer than you think! Our team is breaking down the top contenders in all the major races and highlighting some of our favorites over the next few weeks. We’ll begin with Best Drama Series.

By Abe Friedtanzer

At this point last year, production shutdowns weren’t really going to affect the Emmy Awards since so many of the series had already aired their seasons in the back half of 2019 or early 2020. This time around, things are very different, as many shows that would have theoretically been top contenders haven’t yet returned. Here’s the most jarring statistic: last year there were eleven shows that had been nominated the previous time they were eligible (seven made the cut again). This year, there are only three. Let’s break down the few returning shows that might be back and the wide array of possibilities that could fill the remaining slots… 

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King McQueen On Every Screen

by Jason Adams

Steve McQueen, the man who directed five, count 'em, five of last year's best films with his Small Axe series, is about to confound everybody fixated on old-fashioned definitions of Art all over again with a new three-part thingamajig for the BBC called Uprising.  THR is calling it a "docuseries" and this one, on paper, does admittedly sound more like a proper old-fashioned series than the Small Axe anthology ended up seeming (to me). We'll  wait and see how McQueen confounds our expectations, since he does always love to do that, and to stunning effect. And hey if awards voting bodies can't keep up with where and how the art is happening that's their fault, not the artists.

Uprising will focus in closer on the 1981 events that formed the backdrop of Axe's fourth chapter "Alex Wheatle" -- namely the New Cross Fire which killed 13 young people, and the Black People's Day of Action and then the Brixton Riots which followed right on its heels. It's not entirely clear if this will be entirely a documentary -- McQueen's quoted as saying it will be drawn from "testimonials" of the people involved -- or if there will be a hybrid project with a fictionalized mix of recreations. Not that McQueen needs help but I'm hoping he draws some inspiration from Raoul Peck's recent HBO series Exterminate All the Brutes, which threw absolutely everything at us all at once and blew my socks straight off in the process.

Lunchtime Poll: Which Lizzie would you rather be axe murdered by?

It will never fail to amuse us how Hollywood can rarely go more than, say, six months without announcing competing projects about the same topic. Today we hear news that Elizabeth Olsen (surely feeling the love from the WandaVision reception) will be playing axe murderer Candy Montgomery in an HBO miniseries called Love and Death based on the non-fiction book "Evidence of Love: True Story of Passion and Death in the Suburbs". This book was previously adapted into a TV movie A Killing in a Small Town which won Barbara Hershey the Golden Globe in the 1990s. But this miniseries is NOT the same project as the previously announced Candy which is based on the same crime with Elisabeth Moss headlining. But since we haven't heard a peep about the Moss project in several months, maybe that one isn't happening after all. 

Nevertheless it all begs the question: Which Lizzie would you rather be axe murdered by?

bike trails

Jessica Walter (1941-2021)

by Nathaniel R

Showbiz lost another great this week as Jessica Walter passed away at 80 years of age. Her sensational and much-memed performance of smug, biting, privileged Lucille Bluth in Arrested Development, will live forever but it was just a small portion of her long career...

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