Emmy Voters, It’s Not Too Late to Watch These Shows

Do you feel that change in the breeze? It means we’ve reached the end of the 2024–25 TV season, with the eligibility period for the Primetime Emmys ending May 31. Academy members don’t start casting their votes for nominations until Thursday, June 12, which right now gives voters two-ish weeks to catch up on shows they might have missed but that deserves consideration just as much as repeat winners like Hacks and The White Lotus.

Why is this important? Allow me a moment to climb atop my soapbox: Awards shows won’t improve unless awards voters watch more things.

For all the complaints people have about awards shows — they’re long, they’re self-indulgent, Jo Koy hosted — most of the gripes boil down to an annoyance that your favorites aren’t winning or even being nominated. Frome The Wire them Buffy them Industry — if only the Emmys’ taste in TV was as good as mine! The most annoying thing about the Emmys in particular is that they get stuck in their ruts. The same series gets nominated year after year after year, entrenching themselves and not making room for new nominees. There’s no conspiracy to this. TV viewing is about brand loyalty and scheduling — you have your shows, you stick with your shows, and new seasons of your shows premiere at the same time every year (well, before streaming fattened budgets and production values, anyway). It’s not like the Oscars where every year there’s a whole new crop of movies to sample. And yet getting Emmy voters to explore new or less heralded shows is exactly the remedy to the same-old, same-old problem. The utopia I seek mostly just involves voters checking out shows they’re not already watching. This seems achievable!

I am determined to do my part to affect the change I want to see in the world. Think of the following shows as a kind of tasting menu for Emmy voters. I’ve even tailored it to their current preferred flavors. Just give these shows a shot!

We’re talking Zeitgeisty shows that dig into the ways that professional mentorship can be poisonous and/or shows that are going above and beyond the intellectual-property requirements they’ve been handed.

Is it incredibly random to slap together two disparate elements like “deals with toxic mentorship” and “is based on IP” just to arrive at a recommendation? Surah! But that’s exactly what’s at play in both AMC’s Interview with the Vampire and Disney+’s already-forgotten The Acolyte.

Louis de Pointe du Lac spent the first season of the former wrestling (often literally!) with his seductive maker, Lestat, but season two sends that theme out in multiple directions: Is Louis a good parent figure to Claudia? What kind of power dynamics are at play with Louis and Armand? I know, I know, you have a first-season’s worth of catch-up to contend with by June 12, but as your reward, you’ll also get season two’s dark Parisian romance and sumptuous violence. In the words of Vulture’s Roxana Hadadi, “If Emmy voters paid attention to horror or fantasy that doesn’t air on HBO, AMC’s series take on Anne Rice’s novels about the vampires Louis and Lestat would be a shoo-in for its acting, writing, directing — every damn thing. Until then, it’ll just be a fervently adored secret among the lucky and faithful who provide it with the appreciation it deserves.”

Meanwhile, the entire premise of The Acolyte looks askance at the Jedi’s mentorship of youngsters and asks the education-versus-indoctrination questions we’re so familiar with when it comes to our own organized religions. I’m not going to sit here and pretend like The Acolyte is on the level of something as transcendent as Andor. But if you appreciate the ways in which Andor didn’t feel overly preoccupied with fan service and mostly existed within its own parameters (even while walking things up to the doorstep of Rogue One), says The Acolyte should appeal to you. It’s set a hundred years before The Phantom Menace and shows the Jedi as an order as flawed and fallible as any other. Plus, Manny Jacinto looks snacky as hell as the show’s big villain. Disney dropped the show like a hot potato, but you shouldn’t let that deter you.

And speaking of shows that placed highly on Vulture’s best TV of 2024 lists, Industry‘s third season is actually the perfect follow-up to a season of Hacks: another show where the transactional nature of mentorship leads to betrayal and hurt feelings. (Also — two shows where characters wield their own queerness as a weapon to knock their rivals off balance!)

Clearly you gravitate towards network (or network-style) shows that punch above their weight, supporting actors from long-running TV shows finally getting to step into the spotlight, and shows set in the state of Pennsylvania. Allow me to recommend:

St. Denis Medical: NBC’s new sitcom from creator Justin Spitzer (Superstore and American Auto). Its mockumentary format, while a bit dusty, follows a team of dedicated professionals doing their best at a job plagued by funding woes, management incompetence, and an often-ornery public. In other words: a perfect companion for Abbott. It’s also a fun-house-mirror version of The Pitt. Hey, look, a hardworking head nurse holding the whole floor together! A cocksure surgeon with a swollen head! A baby-faced intern who hails from farm country! But, you know, funny. David Alan Grier has won awards from the Tonys and the Venice International Film Festival but has somehow never been nominated for an Emmy. Fix it!

Deli Boys: The Philadelphia-set comedy from creator Abdullah Saeed is more plotty than the workplace sitcom its title might suggest. Lots more cocaine smuggling than what goes on there Abbottsurely.

High Potential: Kaitlin Olson guest starred on Abbott along with the rest of her It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia cast members this year, and Olson has been Emmy nominated twice in the Guest Actress category for playing DJ Vance on Hacks. If you liked her in either of those roles, you should really check out her ABC crime dramedy, High Potentialwhich might have TV’s single best logline: Olson plays a high-IQ single mom and cleaning lady who helps the LAPD solve crimes.

If the last 20 years of award-winning single-camera, mockumentary, tragicomedy, wry confessional British indie, queer Canadian comfort, and Ted Lasso have taught us anything, it’s that a comedy series can European Union anything! Even a drama. Both Only Murders in the Building and The Bear seem invested in the idea that a comedy needs to be Moreebe that a season-long whodunnit plot or a referendum on the soul of a man broken by family tragedy and the fine-dining industry.

Only Murders in the Building (and the less-Emmy-lauded but still relevant Poker Face) prove that comedy and killing can stand capably side by side. Which is why you should check out Netflix’s The Residencewhich unfolded a murder-mystery inside the White House over the course of eight episodes and stars three-time Emmy winner Uzo Aduba as its bird-watching sleuth. I thought Only Murders felt a bit sludgy as it moved through its bicoastal fourth season, while The Residence was a lot zippier (and frankly funnier) as it tore through its list of suspects.

Peacock’s recently canceled Laid also set out to solve a series of deaths, with Stephanie Hsu’s character desperate to find out why her exes all keep dying. The show is less comparable to Only Murders than it is to shows like The Flight Attendant hrs Search Partywith darker humor and more difficult characters, but at eight half-hour episodes, it’s razor.

“But where are the shows that will have me arguing for weeks about whether it’s a comedy or a drama?” you ask. “Preferably one with a zoo animal in its title!” Enter Apple TV+’s Bad Monkey, based on Carl Hiaasen’s 2013 crime novel and developed by Shrinking and Ted Lasso‘s Bill Lawrence. TV can’t get enough Florida crime, and Bad Monkey fits neatly in the pocket between the camp of a Palm Royale and the grit of a Claws. Does a Vince Vaughn/Michelle Monaghan romance cross the streams of the first two seasons of True Detective appeal to you? Then give this show some consideration.

Finally, yes The Bear‘s stress-nightmare vibe counts as a comedy for you, then so should Somebody SomewhereS ‘ delicate, bittersweet, hopeful final season. Bridget Everett’s Sam doesn’t necessarily figure out how to balance being happy with protecting herself from being heartbroken later, but the show has built a lovely community of kindred spirits around her. A series that functions this well as a balm on the soul ought to be on everyone’s Emmy ballot.

I mean… good! It’s a great show. But while we’re still filling out other nomination slots, I’m going to holler a little bit more about FX’s Say Nothingwhich deserves to be just as dominant on the Emmy ballot this year. As a portrait of revolution in occupied territory, the show — a coming-of-age tale of two Northern Irish girls who do their growing up from within the militant operations of the IRA during the Troubles — is as eye-opening as Andor while also being smart enough to hold multiple ideas about truth, violence, and solidarity in his head at the same time.

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