Innholdsfortegnelse for Awards Special 19B - June 19, 2023 i The Hollywood Reporter

In the comedy Emmys race, voters have to choose. Yes, on a literal level, they’ll have to choose between Abbott Elementary and The Bear and Barry and Ted Lasso as well as others. But there’s also a more existential choice on the table: a choice between optimism and cynicism. On one hand, shows like Apple TV+’s Ted Lasso and ABC’s Abbott Elementary are about the essential goodness of people. In the former, nearly all the stuffy Brits have come around to the inspirational messaging of the coach from Kansas; in the latter, Philadelphia teachers are caring for kids and one another while trying to fend off an encroaching charter school that would make public education less equitable. But then, on the other hand, you have HBO/Max’s Barry, which proved in…

In the first season of HBO/Max’s Perry Mason, the 1930s-set series unspooled the origin story of the titular defense attorney, first made popular in Erle Stanley Gardner’s series of novels and the subsequent CBS legal drama starring Raymond Burr. With a modern lens, however, HBO’s reboot brings more depth to the series’ supporting characters in its second and final season — in particular, Mason’s devoted legal secretary, Della Street (Juliet Rylance), and his courtroom sparring partner, district attorney Hamilton Burger (Justin Kirk). “I signed on only knowing I was playing this famous character in Perry Mason iconography — the losing lawyer from every episode,” says Kirk. But this iteration of Perry Mason forgoes the case-of-the-week format, instead focusing on one case for an entire season. “[As the writers] filled in…

In The Reluctant Traveler With Eugene Levy, the Emmy-winning Schitt’s Creek star fully lives up to his title role. One might imagine that a travel show hosted by someone who hates to travel — and who isn’t curious about exotic locations or trying new meals in those places — simply wouldn’t work. And yet the Apple TV+ series leans into Levy’s extreme discomfort, letting him guide the viewer in far-flung places like Finland, Costa Rica and South Africa while he experiences what most travelers might not. Hilarity ensues when Levy embarks on a night hike through a jungle or attempts to take an elephant’s stool sample while on safari. Levy spoke with THR about the series, which has been renewed for a second season, about how The Reluctant Traveler has…

Going to an Elton John concert is an experience — fans eagerly play the air piano, parents film the show with their cellphones like feverish teenagers, and attendees wear sequined blazers, studded rhinestone glasses and fuzzy scarves to match the style of the Rocket Man. All this was captured in Elton John Live: Farewell From Dodger Stadium, which aired live on Disney+ on Nov. 20. The concert took place 47 years after John’s historic 1975 performance at the Los Angeles ballpark that cemented his superstar status. “The love from the audience, the kindness, the generosity, the loyalty — it’s been like one big party,” John says of the stop on his Farewell Yellow Brick Road Tour, which wraps July 8 in Stockholm. “It’s like the end of an era, and…

GUEST ACTRESS IN A DRAMA Hiam Abbass Succession (HBO/Max) The Palestinian actress, who plays Marcia Roy, Logan’s cunning third wife, returned from Milan upon his death and had a showdown with his mistress. She’s had more to do in other seasons but could still ride across the finish line in a wave of support for the show. Storm Reid The Last of Us (HBO/Max) In the show’s flashback seventh episode, the Euphoria starlet portrays Riley, a rebellious orphan who was Ellie’s best friend and romantic interest. Their night together in an empty mall, culminating in a traumatic catastrophe, could land the 19-year-old her first nom. Anna Torv The Last of Us (HBO/Max) An Aussie export criminally overlooked for past work on Fringe and Mindhunter, she’s poised to land her first…

Lisa, how did we not notice this?” Karamo Brown, co-host of Netflix’s Queer Eye and apparent watcher of Bravo’s Vanderpump Rules, has a lot of questions for Lisa Vanderpump. The former Real Housewives of Beverly Hills star’s namesake reality series has been a cultural fixture since March, when one of its original stars (Tom Sandoval) was discovered to have been cheating on his longtime partner (Ariana Madix) with her close friend (Raquel Leviss) for over half a year. The resulting implosion, dubbed “Scandoval,” catapulted the 10-season-old reality series about the social-climbing servers at Vanderpump’s West Hollywood restaurants from minor tabloid fodder to White House Correspondents’ Dinner punchline. Naturally, it was also a hot topic during THR’s Reality Roundtable when Vanderpump joined Brown, Ellie Kemper (co-host of The Great American Baking…

There’s a lot going on in the title of Peacock reality series The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. It’s a little uncomfortable, but facing your own mortality isn’t exactly easy. “I love all those words together,” says Amy Poehler, who produces under her Paper Kite banner and also narrates the series. “It is meant to be provocative, and it is also very Swedish in its title. The Swedes like to get to the point. It’s gentle and it’s art, and also — we’re all going to die.” The show is the brainchild of Queer Eye’s Scout Productions and is inspired by Margareta Magnusson’s New York Times best-selling book of the same name, which helps readers embrace minimalism through the Swedish concept of döstädning, or death cleaning. Essentially, it boils…

Bad Sisters (Apple TV+) At the center of Apple TV+’s dark comedy-thriller is the mystery of how John-Paul Williams (Claes Bang), a seemingly respectable husband, father and businessman, really died. Life insurance agents suspect foul play, and they’re probably not wrong: As the series quickly establishes, his sisters-in-law were definitely plotting something against J.P., though it’ll take the entire season to find out exactly what came to pass. If the how is in question, the why certainly isn’t. Within his first five minutes of screen time, J.P. shows himself to be so thoroughly, irredeemably, aggressively awful that the real puzzle might be how no one else got around to killing him first. This has the advantage of releasing the audience from any ambivalence we might feel rooting for his comeuppance.…

Mathieu Weekes didn’t see himself becoming one of reality TV’s most sought-after production designers when he began in show business. The eye behind The Traitors (both the U.K. series and the American reboot, which streams on Peacock) began his career as a scenic carpenter, working his way up to run crews and then part of construction management. “And then I started to get the odd job where there was a bit of a crossover into art direction. From [that], I started to get my own design work,” he explains. The London-based designer launched his own company, Bizibot, in 2012, “not necessarily wanting to become a design company, but being almost like a delivery company.” Weekes recalls of the film and television set and production design projects that came his way,…

Password is considered one of the greatest television game shows of all time — so great that it has been revived in different iterations on CBS, ABC and NBC over the past 60 years. The current reboot, hosted by Keke Palmer on NBC, is eligible this year for Emmy consideration in the outstanding game show and game show host categories — two honors that for the first time will be part of the Primetime Emmys instead of the Daytime Emmys. Password first aired on CBS in 1961. The premise: two teams, each composed of one celebrity and one “civilian,” battle to be first to correctly guess a hidden word. Each team is given a single-word clue and works against the clock to guess the Password and earn points toward a…