A weighty historical drama, largely in Japanese? A dark 'comedy' about stalking? In a ceremony that coasted on auto-pilot, bold ideas won
Ed Power 16 September 2024 10:54am
Barring the ever-present risk of a Will Smith stage invasion, the post-Covid award ceremony has become a largely snoozy affair. Yet even as underwhelming Emmy hosts Eugene and Dan Levy did their best to send the audience into a stupor during Sunday night's broadcast, the show at least stirred things up with a leftfield spread of winners.
That fact was acknowledged by Richard Gadd, as the stand-up comedian and former barman accepted one of four gongs bagged for his Netflix stalker drama, Baby Reindeer - a juggernaut the streamer had slipped out into the world with negligible hype. "Take risks, push boundaries, explore the uncomfortable, dare to fail in order to achieve," he told the audience.
Gadd was stating the obvious. Yet it is extraordinary how starkly the big winners at the 2024 Emmys stood out from the competition in their willingness to think outside the box. Aside from Baby Reindeer - which had its victory lap ahead of a defamation lawsuit by the woman alleged to have inspired its stalker character - the other major victor was Disney + and its reboot of the old James Clavell 16th-century Japanese-costume drama Shōgun.
Shōgun scooped best drama as part of a haul of four Emmys (adding to the record 14 Creative Arts Emmys it won the previous week in a separate ceremony acknowledging technical achievements in television-making). It was a remarkable coup for such a slow-moving series. One with largely Japanese dialogue based on a "franchise" nobody has thought about in over 30 years. As with Gadd and Baby Reindeer, it was also a vindication of risk-taking by Disney subsidiary FX. Shōgun was a big swing. But it has paid off in abundance, bringing Disney + the critical acclaim it has lacked amid its endless parade of Marvel and Disney spin-offs.
The other major prizewinner was the already much-heralded The Bear, the FX/Disney dramedy about a Chicago chef (Jeremy Allen White) reckoning with the suicide of his brother. It earned a quartet of accolades (though losing Best Comedy to the more obscure Hacks on HBO).
The Bear has been over-praised in the past. A stuttering third season, moreover, suggested a series running low on ideas. But, again, it represents the sort of risk-taking all too absent from the contemporary landscape. A bittersweet existential drama about a maverick foodie who dreams of turning his family sandwich joint into a high-end eatery? It's no superhero brand extension. Yet it has done more for the reputation of Disney+ than all the Star Wars shows in the galaxy.
The lesson for timid TV executives is that a difficult sell is worth the risk. The driving factor behind both Baby Reindeer and Shōgun was not instant critical acclaim or bells-and-whistles marketing. Their success was instead fuelled by word of mouth. Audiences desperate for something different found themselves sucked into these painstakingly-crafted dramas, which blended gripping writing and taut acting. They then went straight to their WhatsApp group to tell all their pals about it.
Shōgun - in which Cosmo Jarvis played an English sailor caught up in a struggle for supremacy between the feudal warlords ruling Japan - also benefitted from hitting that sweet spot between epic action and high-wire political machinations. It was a reminder that the success of Game of Thrones had led executives to draw the wrong conclusion - that audiences wanted CGI dragons and gratuitous swordplay. The real takeaway of Game of Thrones is that there was a market for medieval intrigue spiced up with the occasional well-executed battle scene - a formula Shōgun carried off to perfection.
Baby Reindeer was, if anything, an even bigger punt. Gadd's black comedy about an aspiring comedian stalked by a woman he befriends at the bar where he worked was loosely based on his own experiences (hence the lawsuit). Capturing the randomness of real life - Gadd's Danny initially struggles to accept he's being stalked - the show crept up the Netflix English language charts, fuelled by viewers recommending it to one another.
But if the Emmys was daring in its selection of winners, the ceremony itself was the same old same old. Looking out of place and ill-at-ease throughout the night, the Levy father-and-son duo struggled to conjure any excitement.
They landed a rare sucker punch with a gag about The Bear and its classification as a comedy ("in the true spirit of The Bear, we will not be making any jokes"). Otherwise, the three-hour broadcast managed just one memorable moment - a 25th-anniversary reunion by the cast of The West Wing, headed by President Bartlett himself, Martin Sheen. West Wing-aside, the Emmys chugged by on auto-pilot. How it could have done with some of the innovative thinking that made Shogun and Baby Reindeer such sensations.
