There is a quiet truth about the Emmy race for outstanding television movie, and it runs directly counter to everything the Oscars have trained pundits to expect. At the Academy Awards, the safest path to a best picture nomination is the prestige drama. At the Emmys, the movie category can be where comedies and other genres thrive.
Part of this is simply supply. The serious, awards-minded films that once might have premiered as stand-alone TV movies now almost always arrive as a limited series, where the runway is longer, and the campaign budgets are bigger. What remains in the movie field skews toward the streaming crowd-pleaser, and television voters, perhaps freed from the cinephile guilt that haunts Oscar season, tend to recognize (and reward) the pics that are flat-out fun to watch. Look at some of the past winners in this category, which include the live-action animated-hybrid “Chip ’n Dale: Rescue Rangers,” the musical biopic “Weird: The Al Yankovic Story,” the comedy “Quiz Lady” and last year’s action-thriller victor “Rebel Ridge.”
When you consider the buzziest contenders this cycle, sitting at the top of the list is Netflix’s “Remarkably Bright Creatures,” an adaptation of the bestselling novel starring legendary actress Sally Field as a woman who befriends an octopus. But what’s interesting is what surrounds it. Prime Video’s “Deep Cover” is a brisk action comedy with Orlando Bloom, sitting right next to Netflix’s “People We Meet on Vacation,” drawn from Emily Henry’s beach-read juggernaut, an unapologetic romance. HBO Max’s late-season drop “Miss You, Love You” leans into the same warmth with Allison Janney and Andrew Rannells leading the charge. At the same time, Hulu’s comedic-action pic “Mike and Nick and Nick and Alice” with Vince Vaughn and James Marsden rounds out a top five built largely on charm.
