One Emmy Award casualty in the prestige TV era? Network drama series.
In the last six years, exactly zero broadcast network dramas have been nominated in the best drama category. But that finally changed on Thursday, when NBC’s breakout hit This Is Us nabbed 11 nominations for its first season.
Along with best drama, the series scored a slew of acting nods (Sterling K. Brown and Milo Ventimiglia for lead drama actor; Chrissy Metz for supporting drama actress; Ron Cephas Jones for supporting drama actor; Brian Tyree Henry, Denis O’Hare and Gerald McRaney for guest drama actor) and landed others for make-up, costumes and casting.
The Good Wife was the last broadcast drama to be nominated, way back in 2011. Since then, it has been a cable-only parade, as acclaimed series such as Mad Men, Homeland and Breaking Bad dominated. And when streaming arrived, House of Cards and Orange is the New Black crashed the party as well.
It’s a far cry from 1999, when HBO’s The Sopranos became the first cable series nominated for best drama, alongside The Practice, Law & Order, ER and NYPD Blue. In 2002, Six Feet Under made it on the best drama list, and in 2008, Dexter and Damages joined the cable party. Critically acclaimed dramas increasingly migrated to cable, and award show voters really love anything that screams “prestige.”
So, how did This Is Us break the broadcast curse? For one, it was the rare freshman show of the 2016-2017 that managed to be a critical darling and a ratings hit. While CBS’s procedural Bull was technically the most-watched new series of the season with an average of 15.1 million viewers, This Is Us was close behind with about 14.8 million people watching every week. Critics could take or leave Bull; for the most part, they love This Is Us.
Viewers love it, too. As the Post’s TV critic Hank Stuever wrote earlier this year (in a piece titled “You need a hug and a good cry, America, and that’s what This Is Us was made for”), the sweetly sad series manages to hit an emotional nerve every week as it chronicles the adventures of the Pearson family in Pittsburgh. The show came along at the perfect time, when many viewers are seeking an outlet for escapism.