Tonight's Primetime Emmy Awards 2024 will be another glitzy, glamorous and exhausting event. A quick look at the list of nominees once again shows how strikingly unrepresentative they are of American television as it is actually watched. Yes, Bear, Beef, Barry, Legacy and White Lotus are all fantastic shows. But these are high-end things that are talked about in the right places and by the right people far more than are actually watched. American TV series that are listened to in large numbers – “Land of Fire”, “NCIS”, “FBI”, “Chicago Fire”, “Blue Bloods”, “Chicago PD”, “Yellowstone” and its offshoots – are, as usual, nowhere to be found visible.
A similar syndrome is observed in the UK in the contrast between the rarefied television Baftas – “Bad Sisters”, “I Am Ruth”, “In My Skin” (no, me too) – and the series that appeal to the plebs : “Faith”, “Call the Midwife”, “Death in Paradise.
Both the Emmys and the Bafta appeal to the same thin layer of impeccably progressive media. In fact, these are the same people who make these shows. There is an overabundance of dark comedy dramas, the supposedly edgy variety that people find sophisticated and make them look very smart to “understand”. A little bit of this, yes, good.
But this is specialty television, not mass market media. There has always been a gap between the top drawer of television and what we might call its meat and potatoes – between the misery of This Is England and the joy of Benidorm. But now it has turned into an abyss.
The prestige sector of television has risen like a golden garden wall jump – in influence and accolades, if not in viewing figures – just as ratings have collapsed. cross the border. The Christmas episode of Coronation Street attracted 2.6 million viewers. Not so long ago, panic broke out in the corridors of Granada if the number of regular episodes fell below 10 million.
Mass entertainment: “Challenge midwives' celebrations are rare Photo: Ollie Courtley
Obviously ratings have dropped so much because of the proliferation of content and platforms. But the desire for prestige accelerated this process. You won't save an ailing supermarket by replacing baked beans with vegan sushi.
Every night BBC One should be showing the equivalent of Death in Paradise or Spooks (as it has been for decades) – shows that will reward and delight you after a hard day. But, as in many other cases, the market does not behave as it should. The incentive for program creators to signal progressive messages and appeal to their own clique is stronger than the incentive to get high ratings and make the highest possible profit. You'd think advertisers and shareholders might notice and apply pressure. But they are so confused in a world where the slightest objection marks you out as an outcast that they don't dare let it even cross their minds.
It often feels like the mainstream channels, with their worthy attempts to improve and/or frustrate you, actually want you to switch off. They're too good for people like you. Both the BBC and ITV now seem like municipal HR departments with several channels randomly attached to them. Vast areas of hotly debated public debate – about the impact of mass immigration, Net Zero or the growing debate around transgenderism – are simply not represented at all. Sometimes it feels like being called into the deputy head's office.
Critics' Dear Heiress. Photo: HBO
What's even stranger is that the prestige paradigm has trickled down, and the realm of what used to be good, honest schlock – even in genres like soap operas, cozy crime thrillers, comedy and science fiction – now usually includes a small amount of social target. Now we have once funny television with insulting finger wagging about colonialism or Brexit added on top. The historical drama depicts life in pre-Blair Britain as a racist hellhole of blackshirts and bigotry (albeit unusually, often at the same time, with a perfectly integrated multiracial cast).
I suspect this is because some of the TV people who have established themselves in the industry over the last decade or so have started to be taken seriously. They hate being seen as trivial and their work as stupid. They want to feel important. But this very easily turns into piety and pomposity. Dedicated, good professional work is no longer commonplace, and it is no longer enough. Prestige must be pursued, even at the lowest level. And today, that means conforming to and repeating an extremely narrow set of acceptable progressive opinions.
But wait, what do we have here? The film “Mr. Bates vs. the Post Office” was a ratings sensation. In the language of our time, it broke through. Why? I think because it's unusual because it speaks to a forgotten truth that goes beyond the usual grievances allowed on television. It tells about the most ordinary people going through hell; the people who are usually either ignored or worse, blamed in TV dramas are the people who follow the rules, do their jobs well, fill out all the right forms and become victims because they are easy targets for the applauding bureaucracy. . People who cannot fight back, who had no champions; modestly ambitious small business people. These are the types that, for decades, the upper-middle-class television establishment has quite regularly denigrated or portrayed as underpaid villains and bigots.
This film depicts an injustice that symbolizes so many other things, so it inevitably struck a powerful chord. This time we have television that doesn't mock its own viewers, which is a throwback to a time when television had a genuine connection with its audience. People are tuning in to this in droves – who would have thought? Mr. Bates has demonstrated a huge appetite for dramas that rarely receive recognition on juries or in the media. I strongly suspect that if it hadn't received so much attention in the news pages, it would have been ignored by next year's awards panels and year-end critics' lists.
How can the Emmys claim to be the most important television award when its focus is so narrow? Television is essentially still a mass medium, so prestige is down and seating is up.
The Emmys will be available to watch on Sky Max at 9pm on January 16
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