My Predictions (And Hopes) For the 2024 Emmy Nominations, Week 3, Part 1: Outstanding Limited Series

 

I’d say if this year doesn’t convince the Emmys that they need to expand the number of nominees in this category up from five, nothing will but I’ve felt this way for at least the last four years and they don’t seem inclined to make any changes. I’m going to save that argument for other articles, especially after the nominations come out and most of the viewing public is justifiably pissed that their favorite Limited Series was excluded.

I need to make it very clear I’m aware that Night Country is going to be nominated in this category. I can’t in good conscience do so. I have advocated for True Detective in years past in numerous categories but I’m now beginning to think I was wrong then. I’ve seen many incredible limited series in the past year: Night Country wouldn’t make the top seven or even eight.

So here are my choices for what I want to see nominated:

 

Baby Reindeer (Netflix)

This series has taken off in this category since Shogun moved into the Best Drama category and few would argue that its incredible story has not resonated with millions – unfortunately, not always in the right way. But when it comes to a measure of quality, few can argue that this show is one of the great accomplishments of 2024.

Richard Gadd’s story of how he was stalked by a woman named Martha became a reflection on both a person’s abject loneliness in this world, the difficulties of male sexuality, issues when it comes to grooming and consent, and all the messes involves sexuality in today’s America. By coincidence or fate, most of the best contenders for Limited Series this year deal in some form with the LGBTQ+ community and Baby Reindeer takes by far the darkest view at it. It is powerful, at times darkly comic, and unflinching when it comes to the loneliness of today’s society. I have doubts at the end of this series whether Donny can move on from everything that happened. I’m not sure the nominations or awards the show gets can do anything to put a band-aid on a bullet hole. But I can’t deny it deserves all the recognition gets.

Fargo (FX)

Some argued that the fifth season of Fargo was a incredible return to form after the fourth season. Considering that I thought the fourth season was on my top ten list, I didn’t agree with that premise but that didn’t mean I didn’t think Season 5 wasn’t magnificent and everything that we love about this incredible anthology.

As we watched the saga of Dot (Juno Temple in an extraordinary role) a Minnesota housewife become ground zero of a fight between her billionaire mother-in-law (Jennifer Jason Leigh) and a North Dakota sheriff (Jon Hamm) we came as close to a throwback to the source material as we’ve ever seen. This show had everything fans have come to expect from Fargo and somehow even more – a fifteenth century soul eater, a battle on Halloween night that involved Nightmare before Christmas, a puppet show that told the story of how Dot was groomed and a breakfast where pancakes resolved the crisis of a century. It made no sense and perfect sense, like everything we’ve come to expect from Noah Hawley and his band for ten years.

I thought that Season 4 would be Hawley’s last word on the subject , so I was overjoyed to see Season 5. Hawley has now revealed he has ideas for more versions of Fargo, though considering his schedule I don’t know how he’ll find the time. But whenever he does I’ll look forward to it. And I hope that the Emmys give this show as much recognition and love as it deserves. The show has been dominating the Golden Globe and Critics Choice nominations at the end of 2023. It will do so here.

Feud: Capote Vs. The Swans (FX)

I had to wait seven long years between the first season of Ryan Murphy’s anthology and the second. It was worth it because we got a story that was at its core more than worth the wait of any viewer.

Using the narrative of  Truman Capote’s unfinished novel Answered Prayers Jon Robert Baitz took us on a journey through New York society during the 1960s to the early 80s to show a story of the wealthy women that made up the coastal elite, how Capote was allowed into the circle, and how his perceived betrayal led to his personal destruction. The series showed some of the best television of the year so far (the episode of Capote’s black and white ball is on my short list for the ten best episodes of 2024) as well as some of the most incredible performances of the year, from Tom Hollander’s brilliant work as Capote to the incredible array of female talent who played the Swans, from Naomi Watts as Babe Paley to Diane Lane and Chole Sevigny on down. The episode also served as a fitting eulogy for the late Treat Williams’s whose brilliant work as Bill Paley will most likely earn him a Supporting Actor Emmy nomination.

Baitz used this to hold a mirror up to so many of the problems that still affect us, particularly both how women are treated horribly by society – and just as vividly how they can treat everyone else – including each other – with equal viciousness. Capote was punished by his Swans, the series makes clear, not because he libeled them but because he showed the truth and they didn’t want to hear it. It was a hard lesson that we still don’t want to learn but we need too.

Lessons in Chemistry (Apple TV)

Ever since the Golden Globes of 2023, Lessons has been one of the biggest award contenders among Limited Series and while it has lost the lion’s share of them (understandably) to Beef, it has been a major nominee in every one since. It received four nominations from the Critics Choice awards, nominations from every guild awards and won quite a bit. There is a good reason, this is one of the best pieces of works of the entire year.

Lessons tells us the story of Elizabeth Zott, a chemistry doctoral candidate in 1940s American who is the victim of institutional sexism from the entire world except for Calvin her intellectual and emotional soul mate who respects all of her ideas and loves her in a way that no one can. When he is taken from her in a savage way, Elizabeth is destroyed emotionally and punished from it due to the sexism of the time, that her female colleagues share just as adamantly as men. Lessons shows how she finds a way to carry on, through the unlikely allies she finds and finding a way to make cooking part of her life.

The show features standout performances by Brie Larson, Lewis Pullman and Aja Naomi King, all formidable contenders for Emmys this year in their respective categories. It tells a story that we never thought we could like from perspectives we couldn’t imagine: one episode is memorably narrating perspective of the family dog. And it shows how far our country has come and how it hasn’t. I don’t know how many prizes this show will get but it deserves them,

 

Ripley  (Netflix)

There are other limited series with homosexual leads at their center that deserve discussion among the Emmy ranks (I’m actually going to deal with one that’s likely to be overlooked in the last entry) but Ripley is one of those that has a power that goes far beyond the ambiguous sexuality of its hero.

Unlike almost every nominee in this category Ripley is extraordinary not so much for what its characters say but they what they don’t say. I’ve seen many brilliant limited series in the last several years; I don’t remember one where dialogue had so little do with what made it great. It’s not just the breathtaking visuals or the long closeups or pauses between dialogue. It’s that the show really leans in tot the idea of ‘show, don’t tell’. In the critical third episode there is no dialogue at all for twenty minutes as we watch Tom complete the crime that will define him, do everything to make sure he gets away with it and see everything not happen. It’s one of the greatest sequences I’ve seen this entire decade on any medium.

Andrew Scott gives a performance unlike those who have come to worship him as Jim Moriarty or Hot Priest. In both those roles he was brilliant for being unrestrained; as Tom Ripley he spends much of his time quietly pensive, considering his words carefully or in his own head. Even when he does criminal actions, we can’t tell what he’s thinking. Johnny Flynn is brilliant as the abrasive Dickie Greenleaf and Dakota Fanning takes Marge into territory not even Gwynneth Paltrow could do.

It's conceivable, given how many novels Highsmith wrote, there might be more seasons of Ripley to come. I actually hope there are. But no one can believe (sorry) this show doesn’t deserve all the nominations and awards it gets.

 

FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION

Fellow Travelers (Showtime)

It is the limitations of nominees that make me have to choose this series because in a world with six nominees this show wouldn’t have to beg for recognition. Fellow Travelers received multiple Golden Globes, Critics Choice and SAG award nominations, was short listed for a Peabody and was on my top ten list of 2023. Had they given the nominations a month ago, we wouldn’t be having this discussion and I could advocate for Apples Never Fall or the second installment of Cruel Summer.

So I fully blame the stupidity of the Academy for this possibility that Fellow Travelers will be ignored in this category the same way Maid was in 2022 and Love and Death was in 2023. But I’ll save that for a later article.

Fellow Travelers shown light on an era of gay history that even the gay performers were themselves unaware of: the Lavender Scare of the 1950s. Focusing on the forbidden love story of two Washington workers at the height of the Red Scare, one of whom works in Joe McCarthy’s office, the other chief aide to his biggest rival in the Senate, we bore witness to so much of the trauma that not even todays LGBTQ+ community knew or even imagined existed, not merely for whites but those gay and trans African-Americans who were dealing with so many conflicts as to which part of their identities to answer first.

Matt Bomer and Jonathan Bailey gave two of the standout performances of 2023 and showed two men whose thirty year journey was one of conflict: Bomer determining to stay in the closet and use a cover, Bailey increasingly embracing every aspect of his homosexuality. We saw aspects of American queer history today’s world would not know of, the saga of Roy Cohn and David Schine, the world of Fire Island, San Francisco after Harvey Milk’s death, and ending in the AIDS crisis. This was one of the great love stories I’ve ever seen, and one of the most profound.

I could have advocated for this show being the nominee instead of Capote and in truth both series deserve to be nominated. Indeed, it is my fear that the presence of Night Country will push both out of the running in this category entirely. And that I would find particularly unfair. Both these limited series do what the best docudramas do: tell a story that needs to be told for an audience that would never know it. That both might be excluded for an inferior installment of True Detective is a crime far worse than anything that happened in Night Country.

Tomorrow I deal with Best Lead Actor in a Limited Series. There probably won’t be any surprises.