Comedy Puts the Drama In This Year's Emmys

Why This Matters: As the ultimate stamp of approval, the Emmys help viewers weed through an overgrown TV environment.

The big headline coming off of this year's Emmy nominations marking the 70th consecutive year the TV Academy has handed out awards was that Netflix finally managed to topple HBO after 18 years as the biggest nominee-getter, grabbing 112 nominations to HBO's 108.

But volume is Netflix's game, so it was probably only a matter of time before the streaming service usurped HBO, which offers far less original fare each year than Netflix with its $8 billion-and-growing programming budget. That's why HBO's achievement of 108 nominations spread across a far smaller programming slate remains remarkable.

The premium cable network also can boast about having the most-nominated show in Game of Thrones with 22, and the second-most-nominated show in Westworld, which tied with NBC's Saturday Night Live with 21 overall nominations. Another small-but-mighty network is FX, which came in fourth overall with 50 nominations, coming in behind NBC with 78 for shows like This Is Us and SNL, but outstripping much larger networks like CBS with 35 and ABC with 31.

For the second time in three years, FX has had what many would regard as the single best American series in all three of the genres in which we currently program: That would be drama series, The Americans; comedy series, Atlanta; and limited series, The Assassination of Gianni Versace, John Landgraf, CEO of FX Networks, said at the Summer TCA Press Tour in Los Angeles.

Once you get past the sheer numbers, another trend emerges: All of this year's drama series nominees have been nominated before and two of them Game of Thrones and Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale are previous winners.

There's nothing unusual here, Marc Berman, editor-in-chief of Programming Insider, said. These shows are all very expected but they are all worthy for different reasons.

It's in the comedy categories where the drama will really play out come Emmy night Monday, Sept. 17, on NBC.

Breaking New Ground in Comedy

There are repeat nominees in the outstanding comedy series category as well, with Atlanta competing again for its second season. ABC's Black-ish starring Anthony Anderson and Tracee Ellis Ross as a black married couple with kids who have great jobs and live in the suburbs HBO's Curb Your Enthusiasm and Silicon Valley and Netflix's Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt are also all repeat nominees.

Black-ish has been nominated for the past three years and Kimmy Schmidt, which comes from Emmy darlings Tina Fey and Robert Carlock, has been nominated for all four of its seasons. Larry David's Curb Your Enthusiasm always has been an Emmy favorite and it managed to snag a nomination even though it had been off the air for six years when it returned last October for 10 episodes.

Netflixs "GLOW"

But the newcomers to this category Amazon Prime's Golden Globe-winner The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, HBO's Barry and Netflix's GLOW are three series, along with Atlanta, that really show off how varied and experimental comedy has become in the gilded age of television, as John Landgraf referred to it at the TCA tour.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel was completely unique and had such a nostalgic flair for New York in the 1960s, Berman said. The writing, acting and production were all A-plus. I would also be very pleased to see GLOW win, which was something we have never seen before.

Right now, odds are favoring Atlanta, according to awards predictions website GoldDerby.com.

It's certainly been star Donald Glover's year, what with a starring role in the theatrical film Solo as the young Lando Calrissian; a high-rated and Emmy-nominated turn on Saturday Night Live late in the season and an Emmy nod for it; a Grammy for best traditional R&B performance for his song Redbone as musical alter ego Childish Gambino; and the viral video release of his single, This Is America, during that SNL weekend, that went on to garner more than 362 million views and counting on You-Tube. Besides his nomination for SNL, Glover also is nominated for best actor, best director and best writing for Atlanta.

Although Glover is expected to win, he's got a strong field surrounding him, including Bill Hader for Barry, Anthony Anderson for black-ish, Larry David for Curb, William H. Macy for Shameless and Ted Danson for NBC's The Good Place.

Atlanta was arguably one of the best, most original seasons of television ever, Landgraf said at TCA. Donald Glover has a chance to become the first African-American creator of a comedy series to ever win the Emmy award for outstanding comedy series. And we hope this happens, because it would be an historic and very well-deserved achievement.

Amazons "The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel"

But Amazon's spunky Mrs. Maisel, as played by Golden Globe winner Rachel Brosnahan and written and executive produced by Amy Sherman-Palladino, upset at the Globes and could easily do so again.

The two shows could not be more different. Atlanta is set very much in the modern-day world in which people complain about their weak-ass Instagram feeds and find themselves having to perform on a makeshift stage at a company that looks very much like Spotify. The show focuses on a small group of African-American friends and showcases their struggles while occasionally taking a turn into the surreal.

Maisel, in contrast, is a loving homage to New York City in the late '50s. Brosnahan plays never-say-die Jewish housewife Miriam Midge Maisel, who morphs into an up-and-coming standup comic, helped along by her cynical manager, Susie (Alex Borstein), who immediately sees her raw talent.

Brosnahan and Borstein, who is also nominated for best character voice-over performance for her

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