Emmys: ‘Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,’ Dodging Drama, to Compete as Comedy (Exclusive)

The Amazon breakout avoids a head-to-head matchup with ‘Game of Thrones’ and ‘The Handmaid’s Tale,’ and will instead face a comedy field from which ‘Veep’ is absent for the first time in years.

The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, the Amazon show that debuted in late 2017 and quickly became the talk of the television industry, has dodged a bullet in the Emmy race.

The show, which is about a housewife who becomes a comic (Rachel Brosnahan), won the best comedy series Golden Globe, Critics’ Choice and PGA awards in quick succession earlier this year. But some of its supporters feared that — contrary to the intentions and wishes of its creators, Amy Sherman-Palladino and Daniel Palladino — it would be classified by the TV Academy as a drama series.

Indeed, the Palladinos’ previous hit show Gilmore Girls, which also juggled laughs with tears, was classified as a drama and a comedy at different points throughout its original run on The WB from 2000-2007, and then, at the request of its creators, as a limited series when it briefly returned to Netflix in 2017.

In Mrs. Maisel’s case, a drama designation would have forced it to go head-to-head with the likes of HBO’s Game of Thrones and Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale. However, The Hollywood Reporter has confirmed that the TV Academy has okayed Mrs. Maisel as a comedy series, making it, in the view of this prognosticator, the show to beat in that prestigious race — not least because HBO’s Veep, which prevailed in each of the last three years, is not in the running this year.

Be the first to comment

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published.


*