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The nominations for the 68th Emmy Awards are still a couple months away — July 14th, mark your calendars — but it is NEVER too early to start making sure that voters don’t forget the best shows and performances of the year. For the next few weeks, then, we’re going to make sure that some potentially overlooked accomplishments don’t get missed. The Emmys, more than any other award, can fall back on inertia, nominating the same stuff year-in and year-out. The idea with these posts is to shake up the status quo. And shake it we will.
Outstanding Limited Series
True story: American Horror Story has never won in this category — which was resurrected and renamed last year after a few years of the Outstanding Miniseries category being combined with TV Movies — despite four consecutive nominations. It would be the most Emmy thing ever if they awarded it now, with Hotel being the least acclaimed of the show’s five seasons. That’s almost certainly not going to happen, as the buzz is lying with another Ryan Murphy project at the moment. The following five series all stand decent-to-great chances at grabbing nominations, but just to make sure, we’re hitting the campaign trail.
American Crime
The second season of ABC’s low-rated but undeniably excellent series turned to a prep school setting where a sexual assault in the show’s first episode set off a chain of events that never failed to be thorny, complicated, messy, and utterly compelling. 12 Years a Slave screenwriter John Ridley shepherded a season that weaved together at least a half dozen characters’ perspectives in a way that told a bigger story. Marvelous TV.
[Where to stream American Crime]
London Spy
The odds are that we won’t get both British spy-based miniseries starring handsome young leads in the same category this year, and The Night Manager has all the buzz. But London Spy deserves a look! Handsome and stylish with unexpected reserves of emotion, the show was a riveting piece of TV.
[Where to stream The Wiz Live!]
The Night Manager
High production values, A+ casting, and tense set pieces characterized this British import which aired on AMC. Here’s hoping Tom Hiddleston’s recent habit of exhausting everybody with his joint publicity binge with Taylor Swift doesn’t adversely affect his or his show’s Emmy chances. Honestly, they’ll probably only enhance them, which is equally as troubling, though in that case at least a deserving show gets the love it’s earned.
[Where to stream The Night Manager]
The People vs. O.J. Simpson: American Crime Story
This one looks like it’s going to be the big dog in this category. For a couple months there, it was all anyone could talk about. That kind of water-cooler appeal is so rare for a TV series these days, and my guess is that the TV Academy will be all over it like blood on an Italian leather glove. And deservedly so! Somehow, The People vs. O.J. Simpson managed to capture the salacious nature of the case and the media frenzy surrounding it without making the viewer feel dirty. It managed to succeed on high- and lowbrow grounds.
[Where to stream The People v. O.J. Simpson]
Show Me a Hero
HBO’s latest collaboration with The Wire creator David Simon was another satisfyingly holistic look at an American city and the politics, policing, and poisonous racism that have informed their history from the late 20th century onward. The performances — particularly those from Oscar Isaac and Catherine Keener — were dynamite and deserve attention of their own, but the series itself deserves buckets of love for being a most satisfying deep dive into the the nuts and bolts of local politics.
