A few surprises among Emmy nominees
In an ever-expanding entertainment universe with TV series coming from broadcast TV, cable and now online streaming services, some worthy shows will get overlooked.
And while Thursday’s nominations for the “67th Annual Emmy Awards” (8 p.m. Sept. 20, Fox) produced their fair share of welcome surprises, the nominations also mixed in the tried (tired?) and true.
One surprising oversight was the lack of a nomination for Starz’s filmed-in-Pittsburgh docuseries “The Chair,” which chronicled the making of two movies by different directors from the same initial story. “The Chair” received nominations in the Television Critics Association Awards earlier this summer, and in February it won a Director’s Guild Award.
“The Chair” had good company in being overlooked: Fox hit “Empire” failed to score a best drama nomination, and neither did ABC hit “How to Get Away With Murder.” (“Empire” star Taraji P. Henson did land a lead actress nomination as did “Murder” star Viola Davis.)
More pleasant surprises included the better-late-than-never nominations for BBC America’s “Orphan Black” star Tatiana Maslany (lead actress in a drama) and Amy Schumer of Comedy Central’s “Inside Amy Schumer” (lead actress in a comedy). Actress Christine Baranski received nominations for two series: “The Good Wife” (supporting actress in a drama) and “The Big Bang Theory” (guest actress in a comedy).
The 2015 Emmy nominations come after some significant rule changes from years past. The Television Academy, recognizing the wealth of content from a spectrum of sources that are Emmy-eligible, increased the number of possible nominations in the best comedy
and drama series categories from six to seven.
The academy also got more specific about what constitutes comedy (the average length of an episode is 30 minutes) and a drama (the average length of an episode is 60 minutes), which means “Orange Is the New Black” could not compete as a comedy this year and had to enter as a drama. (Producers can petition to allow a 60-minute show to compete as a comedy; according to the Los Angeles Times, “OITNB” was denied while “Glee,” “Jane the Virgin” and “Shameless” were approved.)
In the best drama category, these rules alterations didn’t amount to many changes in the nominations: “Better Call Saul” slid in for retired “Breaking Bad” from which it spun off, “Homeland” snuck into the spot vacated by “True Detective” and “Orange” slid into the new seventh slot. FX’s “The Americans” remained overlooked.
The comedy category saw a little more turnover with CBS’s “The Big Bang Theory” snubbed after several years of nominations in favor of newcomers Amazon’s “Transparent” and Netflix’s “Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt” and returning past nominee NBC’s “Parks and Recreation.”
After HBO’s “True Detective” entered itself in the best drama race last year, even though it was clearly a miniseries, this year the Television Academy changed the title of the miniseries category to “limited series” defined as two or more episodes running at least 150 minutes and telling a complete non-recurring story with no ongoing storyline or main characters. (Think: Anthologies like “American Horror Story,” which was nominated this year alongside ABC’s “American Crime,” SundanceTV’s “The Honorable Woman,” HBO’s “Olive Kitteridge” and PBS’s “Wolf Hall” on “Masterpiece.”)
Another change: Actors can no longer attempt to compete in the guest actor category if they appear in 50 percent or more of the episodes of a show’s season. This means “OITNB” star Uzo Aduba, who won a guest star trophy last year despite appearing in most of the show’s second-season episodes, had to enter in a series regular category this year, and she scored a best supporting actress in a drama nomination.
The variety series category got split in two (“variety talk” and “variety sketch”) and the Television Academy expanded the number of voters eligible to cast a ballot in the final round of voting that occurs now that the nominations are out.
By the numbers, HBO’s “Game of Thrones” received the most nominations (24), followed by FX’s “American Horror Story: Freak Show” (19), HBO miniseries “Olive Kitteridge” (13, including one for star Frances McDormand, a Monessen High School grad), HBO biopic “Bessie” (12) and Netflix’s “House of Cards,” AMC’s “Mad Men” and Amazon’s “Transparent” (11 nominations each).
By network, the top draws included HBO (126 nominations), followed by ABC (42), NBC and CBS (41 each), FX Networks (38), Fox (35), Netflix (34), PBS (29), Comedy Central (25), AMC (24), Showtime (18) and Amazon Instant Video (12).
For a complete list of Emmy nominations, go to post-gazette.com.
Kept/canceled
The Revolution continues: AMC announced it picked up “Turn: Washington’s Spies” for a 10-episode third season to air in 2016.
MTV renewed “Teen Wolf” for a 20-episode sixth season.
ABC Family ordered a second season of procedural “Stitchers.”
WGN America renewed supernatural drama “Salem” for a third season to air in 2016.
HBO will bring back “Ballers” for a second season.
Comedy Central renewed “Workaholics” for a sixth and seventh season.
Comedy Central reupped “South Park” for three seasons (10 episodes each), keeping the animated comedy in production through at least 2019, its 23rd season.
SundanceTV renewed drama “Rectify” for a fourth season to air in 2016.
Netflix renewed its teen survivalist drama “Between” for a six-episode second season.
Channel surfing
The “Walking Dead” prequel series “Fear the Walking Dead” finally has a premiere date: 9 p.m. Aug. 23. … NBC banished already renewed “Aquarius” and already canceled “Hannibal” from Thursday to Saturday nights effective this week. … Angela Lansbury and James Earl Jones star in a “Great Performances” presentation of “Driving Miss Daisy” (9 tonight, WQED-TV). … The hot potatoed “Miss USA Page an t , ” which NBC dumped and cable’s Reelz picked up after pageant owner and Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump’s controversial statements about immigrants, logged its lowest ratings ever Sunday night drawing less than 1 million viewers for the live telecast (2.5 million viewers when a repeat telecast is included), according to Deadline.com, down from 5.6 million viewers on NBC last year. … By sometime next year all Comcast broadband customers will be able to opt for a $15-a month online video streaming plan currently being beta-tested called Stream that will include a dozen networks, including broadcast channels and HBO.
Tuned In online
Today’s TV Q&A column responds to questions about “Daniel Tiger’s Neighborhood,” daytime court shows and a KDKA-TV anchor. This week’s Tuned In Journal includes posts on the “Shark Week” mascot’s visit to Pittsburgh, the top Comcast VOD TV series, “Joe Dirt 2” and the inaccuracies of “Impastor.” Read online-only TV content at post-gazette.com/tv.
This week’s podcast includes conversation about “Zoo,” “Humans” and “7 Days in Hell.” Subscribe or listen to Pittsburgh Post-Gazette podcasts at iTunes or at https://soundcloud.com/ pittsburghpg.