THB #711: The Trouble With Emmys

Nominations voting for Emmys starts on June 12.

Unavoidably, there are a load of predictions about what will get nominated and, in some cases, what will win. Looking over these stabs in the not-so-dark, there is a remarkable lack of imagination. I haven’t found anyone who doesn’t really like Your Friends and Neighbors on AppleTV+, for instance… yet to find anyone predicting any kind of nomination for this show requires a high-powered telescope. One the other hand, there are all kinds of loving expectations for The Studio, a show I quite like, but I’m not sure it should shove every other new comedy aside.

Part of this is the limited tastes of some TV writers… but it is also an embrace of the unfortunate reality for Emmy, which keeps expanding and expanding, but hasn’t really evolved to meet the way television is now experienced by viewers.

I decided to go back 15 years and look at Best Comedy and Best Drama for some insight. There are, literally, dozens of categories I could analyze in …