The announcement of the nominees for this year’s Primetime Emmy Awards last week ostensibly provided the annual opportunity to measure the pulse of television viewers in an extraordinary year. One which saw more people stuck in front of their small screens than at any time since the devil’s box began to become a standard household item in the 1950s.
When you look at the nominations, however, you soon realise the awards are not really a reflection of the changing tastes of audiences or critics. Rather, they’re a reflection of the predictable preferences of Emmy voters, who tend to place predominantly safe bets on shows that do well at the awards. Occasionally they allow a few newcomers to occupy a slot or two in the nominations categories, before they lose to the usual suspects come the announcement of the awards in September.
Sometimes a year can come along that so upsets the natural order of things that even the Emmys are affected. Looking at this year’s nominations you may be forgiven for initially thinking this has been one of them.
On the diversity front there are a number of actors of colour nominated in all the major acting categories this year, including nominations for Jonathan Majors and Jurnee Smollett from HBO’s Lovecraft Country, making them the first two black actors to be nominated from the same show in the best actor and best actress in a drama series category.
Lovecraft Country, which in spite of much critical acclaim was cancelled after its first season at HBO, earned 16 nominations across all categories and earned acting nominations in each of the available acting categories. That’s encouraging for a show that made some fascinating mileage out of its premise, which took the dodgily racist stories of cult sci-fi/horror writer HP Lovecraft and turned them on their head. But it may be less for its racially challenging content and more for its genre thrills that the show has earned its recognition from Emmy voters.
Sci-fi dominates this year, with shows such as Disney+’s Star Wars universe drama The Mandalorian, Amazon Prime Video’s dark superhero series The Boys and the Marvel Comics Universe series The Falcon and the Winter Soldier picking up nominations.
Now an Emmy stalwart since it became the first streaming show to win the coveted best drama series award in 2018, Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale — more strictly dystopian than straight sci-fi — also earned an expected fistful of nominations. The biggest surprise was the 21 nominations Disney+’s first foray into Marvel Comics Universe WandaVision received, but that’s perhaps more for its homage to classic US television and its blending of sci-fi rather than its adherence to the traditional norms of the genre.
Of the shows and performances that didn’t receive any nods, the biggest disappointments were for Amazon’s The Underground Railroad, which failed to earn a best actress in a limited series nomination for its lead, SA actress Thuso Mbedu, who carried one of the year’s most difficult and relevant shows; and the lack of a nomination for best actor in the same category for Ethan Hawke’s astounding turn in The Good Lord Bird. Likewise, British Oscar-winning director Steve McQueen’s groundbreaking anthology series Small Axe, examining the complex contours of black British life in the 20th century, failed to earn any nominations.
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