The year’s biggest night in television sees plenty of nominations for Severance, The Studio, The White Lotus and Adolescence – but who will win?
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t’s that time of year again, where you consider all that you have and have not watched in the vast world of television. The Emmys are back, more or less kicking off the Hollywood award season with a healthy mix of Emmy stalwarts and beloved newbies. Will voters choose between the head (Severance, with a leading 27 noms) or the heart (The Pitt) for best drama? Will The Studio sweep the comedy awards? Here are our picks for the night:
Nominees: Andor, The Diplomat, The Last of Us, Paradise, The Pitt, Severance, Slow Horses, The White Lotus
This is one of the most interesting races for best drama in years, and not just because the absence of the most recent juggernauts – HBO’s Succession and FX’s Shōgun – leaves the field open. Rather, its two frontrunners, Apple TV’s workplace hell Severance and HBO Max’s medical drama The Pitt, distill the current state of the television business. One is the model of 2020s prestige TV – an extremely high-budget ($20m an episode!), cerebral mystery box that paid for top-tier talent and took its sweet time (3 years!) between seasons. The other is old network television finally adapted to a streaming service – fast-paced, single-location, straightforward, making stars rather than hiring them. The Pitt is the feel-good choice here, as an actually enjoyable proof of concept against TV bloat. But it’s likely that Emmy voters will be more impressed by the vague black boxes of Severance’s second season. Still, neither are the best show of the year – that would be Disney+’s Andor, a bafflingly under-discussed comet that somehow slipped through the contraction of the TV business. It is unlikely we will see something like it – politically radical with Disney budget carte blanche – ever again.
