Innholdsfortegnelse for Awards Special, 29A, August 12, 2021 i The Hollywood Reporter

I am always raving to anyone and everyone who will listen about the brilliance of the Ted Lasso acting ensemble. After avoiding the juggernaut Apple TV+ series for nearly a year after it debuted, I finally shed my sneering contrarianism and irrational aversion to Jason Sudeikis to plunge headfirst into this sweet comedy about a mustachioed Midwestern coach who’s brought to the U.K. to rejuvenate a skeptical soccer team. (Or so he thinks.) Although lead actor frontrunner Sudeikis attracts most of the show’s glory, it’s actually the wider supporting cast that makes something this inherently gooey worth watching: Hannah Waddingham’s vulnerable virago team owner Rebecca; Jeremy Swift’s rebellious toady Higgins; Brett Goldstein’s grouchy footballer-with-a-heart-of-gold Roy; Juno Temple’s ebullient flirt Keeley; Nick Mohammed’s panicky equipment manager Nate; Brendan Hunt’s quippy Coach…

When you bring a multidecade story about the British monarchy to Netflix, perhaps you have visions of Emmys dancing in your head, but it’s doubtful that creators Josh Heald, Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg had the same expectations when they brought their sequel to The Karate Kid to fledgling streamer YouTube Red. Cobra Kai did earn strong reviews and helped put YouTube Red on the map, but it wasn’t enough to keep the platform in the streaming scripted game, so the Ralph Macchio and William Zabka reunion moved to Netflix. Suddenly, Cobra Kai went from cult favorite to mainstream smash — and suddenly the show went from unexpectedly admired to Emmy nominee for outstanding comedy series. Heald recently spoke with THR about the expanded recognition, future nomination hopes for his…

For proof that 2021 is truly a bizarre year in TV comedy, look no further than the inclusion of Emily in Paris. Deemed a guilty pleasure at the time of its premiere, the Netflix series earned surprise Golden Globe nominations and became a major talking point in the discreditation of the Hollywood Foreign Press. Its inclusion in the Emmy race may not completely silence its haters, but creator Darren Star has got to be feeling vindicated that its entry into the awards conversation was not a fluke.…

Back in 2015, Jen Statsky took a road trip with her close friends Paul W. Downs and Lucia Aniello to a monster truck rally in Portland, Maine. Downs was shooting a sketch for a Netflix comedy special, and Statsky and Aniello tagged along to help pitch jokes. On the ride up, they got to talking about women in comedy, particularly the ones who came up in a different time and had to work twice as hard as many of their male counterparts but never really got their due. “We just started talking about the women who were so underappreciated despite being enormous talents and working really, really hard. The ones that got knocked down a thousand times and got back up 1,001,” says Statsky. “We became really interested in kind…

The main character of Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso might be someone you’d root for, but he’s not exactly a shoo-in to win, well, anything. That’s not the case for the series itself, which made history this year with its 20 Emmy nominations — the most ever for a freshman comedy. With star and co-creator Jason Sudeikis leading a cast that now boasts seven Emmy nominees, the show about an American football coach leading an English football (as in soccer) team is the favorite to win outstanding comedy series. For co-creator Brendan Hunt, who also appears on the series as Lasso’s American colleague Coach Beard, the crop of Emmy noms is icing on the cake — the cake being a comic collaboration with longtime friends Sudeikis and co-creator Joe Kelly that…

BRIDGERTON Netflix’s sumptuous and sexy romantic series brings fresh life to the costume drama with an irreverent, lovingly historical take on Regency-era England. Contemporary attitudes about sex and womanhood mix beguilingly with a setting typically known for its restrained and repressed old-fashionedness. HACKS Don’t be fooled by Jean Smart’s incredible turn as a sharp-tongued Las Vegas stand-up comedian — the series wouldn’t work without her Gen Z foil played by Hannah Einbinder, whose emotional pratfalls as she stumbles through adulthood provide some of the series’ darker and more affecting narrative arcs. LOVECRAFT COUNTRY It might feel like divine timing that the HBO drama, shot in 2018, premiered last fall following a summer of protests sparked by George Floyd’s murder. TV was due for a reexamination of America’s racist history —…

When you get to a seventh season, you kind of need a pandemic,” notes Black-ish showrunner Courtney Lilly, halfway joking about the fresh creative opportunities inherent in the global crisis that struck as the venerable series was mounting its most recent season. “Frasier went through one, Friends, I think they went through two pandemics,” he jests. Kidding aside, Lilly and his writers room initially believed they were starting out ahead of schedule, with several story ideas already in motion before production ended on season six in early 2020. “Literally we were like, ‘We’ve got like four scripts — we’re going to go into this season way ahead, rarin’ to go.” He recalls. “And then everything changed.” As the sheltered summer months wore on and plans on how to safely resume…

If there’s a greater underdog story than 1984’s The Karate Kid, it’s the real-life trajectory of the unlikely TV spinoff that followed the film four decades later. Under the radar on original streaming afterthought YouTube Red, Cobra Kai moved to Netflix in 2020 and landed on its most watched list before — against even greater odds — earning an outstanding comedy nomination. It seems impossible that the show could pull off a win, but its track record for defying expectations shouldn’t be ignored.…

A flight attendant named Cassie Bowden (Kaley Cuoco) spends a booze-fueled Bangkok evening with handsome stranger Alex Sokolof — and awakens the next morning in his bed to find that he has been brutally murdered. Since Cassie has no memory of the night’s events, she must put together the pieces herself before the authorities beat her to it. So goes the premise of HBO Max’s The Flight Attendant, based on Chris Bohjalian’s novel. When writer-producer Steve Yockey heard the “eccentric” pitch for HBO’s adaptation (Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment meets Fleabag), he knew he was up for the task. The accomplished playwright and Supernatural scribe put his own spin on the story by adding elements of comedy, fantasy and a heightened focus on female friendships. Yockey recently spoke to THR about…

One series has a real chance of keeping Emmy freight train Ted Lasso from barreling into its assumed victory, and that is Hacks. The slick comedy arrived on HBO Max out of nowhere and, likely to the delight of many a TV Academy member, parodied the entertainment industry in ways its logline never promised. Jean Smart should and almost certainly will win the lead actress race, but Hacks’ surplus of other nominations are likely to produce some more love as well.…

Ted Lasso was the de facto Emmy favorite across all categories going into this year’s race. A year’s worth of steady word-of-mouth, a well-timed second season (now streaming) an infusion of earnestness into a category that often awards sarcasm, the Apple TV+ breakout from Jason Sudeikis is a worthy heir to Schitt’s Creek’s reigning Emmy gold. And with the most nominations for a freshman comedy of all time, it seems poised to follow in the footsteps of a more caustic predecessor — 30 Rock, which began its own Emmy reign in its first season.…

PAUL BETTANY WandaVision, Disney+ For his portrayal of Vision, a synthezoid made from vibranium who was thought to be dead but then re-emerged in suburban bliss in Disney+’s first MCU TV series, this character actor is Emmy nominated for the first time. On the nine-episode show, which rolled out in the spring and rated 91 percent on Rotten Tomatoes, he — like Elizabeth Olsen as Vision’s doting wife, Wanda — seamlessly slips into numerous different sitcom eras. He’s this category’s only nominee whose program is up for best limited/anthology series, and with 23 noms, it has the most of any limited/anthology series — and only one behind The Crown and The Mandalorian for the most of any show — this year. HUGH GRANT The Undoing, HBO The longtime king of…

The only broadcast comedy in the main race has had a spotty record over the years. Twenty-one nominations across seven seasons have produced just one win — for hair-styling. And while stars Tracee Ellis Ross and Anthony Anderson are perennial frontrunners, the show itself hadn’t been nominated for best comedy since 2018. Its history has paved an unlikely road to victory, but there’s still a chance that broadcast nostalgia (and admiration for 21 episodes produced amid COVID-19) might inspire a surprise.…

Many might justifiably ask whether The Flight Attendant is a comedy, but the better question might be: “Does its category even matter?” HBO Max’s first true breakout had more than enough mainstream buzz and industry affection to justify its nine nominations in comedy or drama. And while series win seems highly unlikely, a supporting actress title for Rosie Perez (facing split votes for the women of SNL and Ted Lasso) is very much still on the table.…

Chuck Lorre insists he was consumed with gratitude when he found out his passion project, The Kominsky Method, had been Emmy-nominated for its third and final season. “That people thought well enough of the show to include it, how can you not feel grateful?” he says. After all, Lorre is exceedingly aware of the seemingly infinite choices TV viewers have today, and it was he who had convinced Netflix to let him continue after co-star Alan Arkin decided to step away. “To be singled out in any way, shape or form has to result in gratitude,” he continues, “and if you’re not grateful, you’re not paying attention.” In this final season of The Kominsky Method, Michael Douglas’ character wrestles with what happens when your dreams come true — when doors…

Maya Erskine and Anna Konkle’s awkward ode to adolescence is the kind of show that awards-gazers pre-write snubs stories about on the eve of nominations. So PEN15’s inclusion in the main comedy race, not to mention a writing mention for Erskine, is in and of itself a victory. But with its Hollywood appeal — comedy writers adore PEN15 — and the memorable shtick of adult actresses playing children, it’s exactly the kind of series that’s been known to stage an upset.…

The Wonder Years — which returns to ABC on Sept. 22 in a version that follows a Black family in the late 1960s living in Montgomery, Alabama — was nominated for 28 Emmy Awards during its 1988-92 run. Among them was one for star Fred Savage, who at 13 became the youngest male actor ever nominated for outstanding lead in a comedy series (a record that still stands). The show won four Emmys, including outstanding comedy series in 1988. One of a wave of shows that capitalized on aging Baby Boomer audiences’ fascination with themselves (NBC’s Family Ties and ABC’s thirtysomething among them), Wonder Years was a less-jaded take on the theme. Each season was set exactly 20 years before its air date and followed the all-American Arnold family as…