Emmy Review: Drama Series

By Abe Friedtanzer

Will HBO or Netflix reign on Emmy night?

This year’s Best Drama slate includes seven past nominees and one freshman series. There are heavy hitters but also major omissions like Big Little Lies, The Morning Show, and This Is Us in favor of shows that didn’t consistently show up across categories. To me, Succession, which I’m predicting will win lead actor, supporting actress, guest actress, and writing, seems like the safe frontrunner, like Game of Thrones was last year. But are we missing another show that could win it instead? 

I’ll try to avoid major plot details in my analysis – but if you’d like more spoiler-filled descriptions, click on the episode titles. Let’s consider each nominee…

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Emmy Review: Fantasy/Sci-Fi Costumes

by Cláudio Alves

Compared to other Emmy awards, the Best Costumes tryptic of Contemporary, Period, and Fantasy/Sci-Fi represents a fairly recent addition. For decades, there was no distinction between genres. Contemporary, period and fantasy competed together, to the obvious disadvantage of the more modern-set series. Later on, fantasy and period designs were joined in a single award, leaving space for contemporary fashions to win. As of 2018, all three got their own category.

We'll be starting our analysis of the Best Costumes contenders with the Fantasy/Sci-Fi race which has been dominated by Game of Thrones in previous years. As that series' reign has ended, a new champion will emerge…

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Happy Day, Miss Moss

by Jason Adams

Today we wish a happy 38 to the actress I have come to consider (give or take a Carey Mulligan) my favorite working actress, Elisabeth Moss. At the start of quarantine I binge-watched Mad Men for the very first time (here's the Twitter thread if you missed it) which only cemented my love, which had been gaining momentum like a great big boulder rolling down a hill (there's a "gathering Moss" joke in there somewhere) over the past few years to become, now, this unstoppable force.

The top of the hill was definitely 2014-ish when the triumverate of Listen Up Phillip, The One I Love, and Queen of Earth came out swinging and knocked me out of my socks...

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Emmy Watch: What will be up for Drama Series?

by Abe Fried-Tanzer

The current state of world affairs is undoubtedly going to have an effect on the movie year and the ensuing awards, with new streaming eligibility considerations announced for the Golden Globes. The Emmy Awards, on the other hand, won’t be affected to the same degree. While the nominations announcement has already been pushed back two weeks and how, when, and where trophies will be handed out needs to be figured out, the actual content that will be rewarded has, for the most part, already been seen. While a few shows that aren’t major category players these days – like Grey’s Anatomy, The Walking Dead, and The Flash – won’t be able to finish filming their seasons, and the fourth season of Fargo will no longer premiere this spring, almost everything else aired as planned.

The most interesting Emmy category this year is one of the top races: Best Drama Series. In an unprecedented case created in part by the Emmy eligibility window, there are eleven (!!!) programs nominated for their most recent seasons vying for a repeat nomination, and that doesn’t even take into account any new shows for the seven available slots…

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Top Ten: Which dramas have been nominated for the most acting Emmys?

Game of Thrones shocking showing at the Emmy nominations -- including 10 ACTING NOMINATIONS and 32 overall (a new record for overall in one single season beating NYPD Blue's previous mark) -- begs the question of how many shows the voting body actually watches on a regular basis. 32 nominations for a single shows seems more than a little excessive no matter how good a show is, given the hundreds of eligible competitors. Especially when it comes to acting.

So it made us curious. Is this normal and/or how abnormal is it? So we looked back through Emmy history which is not that easy to do -- the Emmys are actually much more like the Grammys than the Oscars in that they change their categories frequently and have 100s of them and it's harder to sift through their history analytically given that there's less accurate information compiled in any one place. To make this list simpler and also more far-ranging (wait-what?), we've devided this into the six drama series acting categories, rather than one collective list and we've also included how these lists are effected by the nominations this year. Hope you enjoy... 

TEN  SERIES WITH THE MOST ACTING NOMINATIONS FOR "LEAD ACTRESS"

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