The Emmy Awards 2021 nominations are out, and with so many to consider, you can find many views on what they actually mean. We help show the way through the details
The nominations are many (and all here in this list — read thoroughly, there will be questions at the end #joke). We’ve already looked at Bridgerton and The Boys, now we turn our attention to the titles garnering most nominations, and the picture as a whole.
The Emmy Awards 2021 Nominations by the numbers
The official press release has some good summaries, which we reproduce in part to give context.
…The Crown and The Mandalorian have tied for the top spot for program nominations with 24 followed by WandaVision (23), The Handmaid’s Tale (21), Saturday Night Live (21), Ted Lasso (20), Lovecraft Country (18), The Queen’s Gambit (18) and Mare of Easttown (16)…
…HBO/HBO Max leads the nominations in totals by platform with 130. Netflix has the second-most nominations with 129, and rounding out the top four are Disney+ with 71 and NBC with 46…
..Bridgerton, Lovecraft Country and The Boys are newcomers to the Outstanding Drama Series category, joining returning nominees Pose, The Crown, The Mandalorian, This Is Us and previous category winner The Handmaid’s Tale…
..Seventy-five percent of this year’s nominees for Outstanding Comedy Series are new to the category including Cobra Kai, Emily in Paris, Hacks, Pen15, Ted Lasso and The Flight Attendant. Returning favorites include black-ish and The Kominsky Method…
This all looks like a healthy state of affairs, with very diverse titles in the running for various awards. What else does it tell us?
The winners (even before award)
If you study where the awards have fallen, streaming now dominates. Thanks to this analysis by Quartz, you get a strong sense of a big picture: Netflix has dropped back but Disney has more than filled the gap created. HBO Max is another big winner, and one we will be paying more attention to (and only generally arrive in the UK via Sky).
Disney are rightly pleased with themselves (see their press release) and there’s good analysis of how Disney has effectively bought in success via Marvel and Star Wars in this SyFy.com article.
Netflix has been a little more muted, but we expect some press from them soon. They have many good titles up for a lot of awards, but it does all add to the general sense of lost momentum for the streaming giant. Of course it’s easy to read a lot into a moment in time, and we await the actual Emmy Awards results later this year.