The categories for the award for outstanding drama at this year’s Emmy Awards were without surprises: It was a Shogun Sweep, apart from Billy Crudup’s well-deserved win for his convincingly bizarre performance as Chaos Agent CEO in The morning show. The show entered its airing with a record number of wins in the non-televised categories, with historic victories from Hiroyuki Sanada and Anna Sawai adding to the success before the FX series walked away with the award for Best Overall Drama Series.
This is all good and well deserved –Shogun is incredible. But we should not forget Shogun– similar to Donald Glover’s Prime series Mr and Mrs Smithwhich also received a number of nominations, probably was in the Limited Series race instead. It is not a category change that would be worth an endless debate, such as: The bear status as an outstanding comedy, and there are precedents for miniseries that have a maximum Big little liesBut the simple truth is that the two most critically acclaimed shows in the running for Best Drama were planned as one-off shows, and discussion of more only came up after their overwhelming success. They continue because it would be bad for business not to, not because there is a real story unfolding over multiple seasons.
Consequencesimilar to the late Logan Roy, has left a large power vacuum. It looks like The Bear, Hacks and Abbott Elementary will dominate comedy for the foreseeable future, but where is the new blood in drama? The fact that The morning show The series’s ability to garner the most drama nominations of all time seems to be more a byproduct of the series’ undeniable star cast than its quality or hype. The Crown is over. Slow horses was – forgive me – an outsider. Stand out? The future of this series is uncertain – it could just as easily crash. And the less that is said about it, 3 Body problemthe better.
The stage is now set for industry to fill that gap, as the third season of the HBO series has already lived up to the burden of making Sunday Night HBO a prestigious event again. But that is just one slot. We will certainly see some nominations for For lack of evidencethe lively summer show from Apple TV+, which surprisingly got a second season even faster than Shogun But what else? When Logan left, his successor was not yet clear, but the decisions were. The state of affairs in the drama landscape is much less certain, which is a little worrying. But amidst chaos and uncertainty, brilliant ideas often arise.
