The 77th Emmy Awards will be held September 14 and broadcast on CBS and Paramount +. Chances are, you haven’t seen all of the nominated productions, so think of me as your friendly neighborhood guide to 2025 television achievement. Or in some cases, underachievement.
On August 14, I began the gradual release of my ranked choices of the nominees, from my least favorite to my most favorite, in four marquee categories: Outstanding Television Movie; Outstanding Limited Or Anthology Series; Outstanding Comedy Series; and Outstanding Drama Series.
These choices are NOT predictions of what will win, nor am I trying to tell you what is the objectively “best” television film or series, just my personal favorites. Hopefully, reading these mini reviews will simply help you be a more informed and discerning viewer.
This week: Outstanding Drama Series
From the mind of Dan Fogelman, the creator of “This Is Us,” comes the dystopian thriller “Paradise.” The title is an ironic take on the show’s premise: An underground bunker universe that serves as an alternative home for the survivors of a doomsday event on earth is gradually revealed to be anything but utopian. Sterling K. Brown stars as Xavier Davis, a secret service agent assigned to body the U.S. President (James Marsden). When the President is mysteriously murdered, Davis pulls back the curtain on the sham promised land that is shadow-governed by gazillionaire Samantha Redmon (Julianne Nicholson, who makes evil look fun). And the harder Davis tugs on the curtain, the more conspiracies are laid bare.
“Paradise” has the dubious distinction of feeling the most television network-like of all the Emmy nominees. Maybe it’s the Shonda Rhimes-esque vibe, the implausibly good-looking cast members, or the less-than-convincing plot progressions. Ultimately, “Paradise” is entertaining enough, but despite its intriguing premise, rarely does it feel fresh or imaginatively conceived.
“The White Lotus” has become enough of a cultural phenomena that requires little introduction: Each season, like an R-rated “Fantasy Island,” it follows the vacationing exploits of privileged, mostly white, Americans against the backdrop of an exotic waterside resort. Each season begins with the revelation of a death among one of the guests and we spend the subsequent episodes following the chain of events, sexual exploits, and substance abuses that got us there.
The first season, set in Hawaii, was a pretty fun and novel romp. The second season, set in Italy, was arguably the most twisty, titillating, and perceptive of human nature. But now in its third season, this time set in Thailand, the character types and relationships are starting to repeat themselves and feel stock: Once again there is the young, oversexed toxic male; the dysfunctional family; the co-dependent and emotionally abusive heterosexual couple; and the fraying friend group. The locals may not be as routinely screwed up as the tourists, but they also rarely achieve as high a level of humanity. There are caricatures of wealth and white fragility, but the show also can’t help but drape non-white culture in mystical otherness.
Every guest has a one-note anxiety. For example, Rich (Walter Goggins) amplifies an obsession with avenging his father’s death in every scene he’s in, Similarly, Tim (Jason Isaacs) spends the entire season in anesthetized fear about the revelation of his criminal activities. Rather than draw his characters with three dimensions or with anything resembling empathy, Mike White, the series creator, approaches them with simple derision. No doubt, our world is overpopulated with despicable people, but White apparently found the least interesting of them to put on screen. And by providing little insight into how these people got to be such jerks, the entertainment value offered by season 3 is little more than privilege porn.
Along with cop shows, hospital dramas are one of the most abused formulas in television. No matter what set in, urban center or otherwise , we are sure to find talented and morally high-grounded doctors, corporate suits demanding profits, and lots of people looking mighty fine in their scrubs. Meanwhile, there’s always enough medical jargon flying fast and more furiously than you can shake a stethoscope at.
“The Pitt’s” conceit is that it plays out in real time, Each episode is an hour within a high- intensity, 15-hour shift in a Pittsburg hospital emergency care facility. And on this particular day, the head physician, Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch (Noah Wyle) is coping with the anniversary of the death of his mentor who succumbed to COVID.
Because the entire season takes place in the course of a single day, it doesn’t have the room for extensive on-air backstories. As a result, the character development is limited and the storylines are compressed. Of course, we confront a range of ethical issues as well as explicit race, gender, and sexual orientation matters subtly ripped from today’s culture wars. Meanwhile, we witness several heart attacks, a child drowning, drug overdoses, child abuse, a full body burn victim, sex trafficking, fist fights, and the theft of an ambulance. And that’s just among the patients. The doctors are involved in an arrest, assault, drug theft, homicide, and a miscarriage. And if that wasn’t enough, there is a mass shooting involving dozens of dead and injured that turns the hospital into a M.A.S.H. unit and morgue. Yes, like I said, all in one shift.
Doctor Robby proves not only to be a talented and compassionate doctor, but a highly relatable human being, even as the show can’t always avoid the superhero tropes embedded in the hospital drama genre. Wyle is the undeniable center of gravity of the show and provides its best performance, but often by default. Most of the actors who portray the patients, for instance, perform as if overacting is written into their union contracts.
Given the overwhelming popularity of “The Pitt,” you may want to discount my views as fringe. It’s not that I feel “The Pitt” is not good, I just had a hard time finding high doses of originality, especially having watched a decent share of network hospital and ER television shows in my lifetime. To that end, if I see another television doctor giving chest compressions long after the patient has proven to be unrevivable, with colleagues standing across with futility in their eyes, or if another patient and their family (literally and figuratively) spill their guts and share the intimate details of their lives in front of doctors they met barely ten minutes ago, I swear I will gnash my teeth with my remote.
Like “The Pitt,” “Slow Horses” has to work uphill against the clichés of an over-tread television genre. In this case, it’s the cop show, more specifically, the subgenre known as the spy thriller. “Slow Horses,” based on the “Slough House” novels by Mick Herron, is set in England and follows a group of MI5 agents exiled to a broken down spy annex called Slough House. These outcasts are led by the brilliant Jackson Lamb (Sir Gary Oldman) who just may be the most jerkish and slovenly cretin to ever foul the world of espionage. Not a day goes by that Lamb is not gratuitously farting up an enclosed space and disrespecting everyone he comes in contact with. Think Columbo meets Oscar the Grouch meets an unrestrained barnyard animal.
One of the most fun aspects of “Slow Horses” is all the spy jargon and gritty intelligence gathering on display. And yet with all the high-tech gadgetry, transnational intrigue and CCTV surveillance, the spy craft always seems to come down to people secretly tailing one another on foot. And while the show is premised on the idea that the Slough House crew is made up of incompetent screw ups, they consistently outpace, outsmart, and outgun their supposed elite colleagues working out of the posh MI5 headquarters, known internally as “The Park.”
Season 4 has the heroic, talented, but always out-of-his depth, River Cartwright (Jack Lowden) investigating the attempted assassination of his grandfather, David Cartwright (Jonathan Pryce). Oldman delivers yet another tour de force performance while creating one of the most indelible crimefighting anti-heroes in recent memory. Oldman is surrounded by a stellar supporting cast who keep you rooting for their characters long enough to make you forget how preposterous the action is. Slow Horses? Given the extreme body count among the operatives, it feels more like Dead Horses.
Unless you are a Comic-Com regular, it would be justified to approach the latest addition to the “Star Wars” cannon with trepidation. Did we really need another prequel to “a long time ago in a galaxy far, far away?” How long can this franchise run off the fumes of the 1977 film and fandom?
I don’t have answers to these and life’s other vexing questions, but I can at least tell you that “Andor” — which gives us the backstory of Cassian Andor’s road from thief to rebel spy, as introduced to us in the 2016 film, “Rogue One” — is cut from a surprisingly different cloth than other “Star Wars” properties, especially considering its Disney parentage.
Yes, there are still silly gunfights and goofy creatures promenading the galaxy. And the supposedly elite, white-helmeted stormtroopers inexplicably remain the Gang That Couldn’t Shoot Straight. But what makes “Andor” worth watching is that it’s a less-than-glamorous take on the process of revolution building, the sacrifices that come with political radicalization, and the moral compromises made on the road to being a true believer. Instead of an unambiguous struggle between good vs. evil, there are shades of righteousness and ill intent. The Empire and rebellion combatants are more separated by the side of the tracks they were born on than their honor code. And the Empire’s moral corruption is inspired less from abject evil than from the drunkenness of unfettered power.
Diego Luna stars as Cassian Andor. He doesn’t always make for the most convincing rebel swashbuckler, but the other members of the cast more than prop him up, namely Denise Gough as a blindly ambitious member of the Imperial Security Bureau; Kyle Sollar, as a security services Kool Aide sipper who is obsessed with finding Andor; and Stellan Skarsgård as the flawed but catalytic mastermind behind the resistance.
Up to now, it wasn’t just the action throughout the Star Wars franchise that occurred light years away; the politics felt far removed as well. In “Andor,” there is thankfully little of the hocus pocus of The Force, and the Empire’s oppression feels closer to home and more familiar. Specifically, the Empire is reminiscent of the Third Reich and looks like a plausible MAGA future in its suppression of human rights, control over the media, and its authoritarian bluntness. If only Lando Calrissian would show up to take down the Death Star here on earth.
Although it’s considered prestige television, at first glance, “The Last of Us,” a television adaptation of an immersive video game, could be mistaken for yet another zombie apocalypse. Let’s be honest, it is. But “The Last of Us” is, first and foremost, compelling storytelling. And much like the “Walking Dead,” despite the incessant chase scenes, blood and gore, and the cure for the Zombie virus that will probably never arrive, the most lethal bodies roaming the earth are not the infected zombies, but the “healthy” human survivors driven by scarcity and hyped-up amygdalas.
If you were anticipating the consequences of all the damage wrought as Joel (Pedro Pascal) and Ellie (Bella Ramsey) ran the gauntlet in season one, your blood thirst will be sated. If there is an overarching theme for season two it’s “what goes around comes around.” Indeed, hell hath no fury like a “The Last of Us” character who feels wronged. As a result, each episode of “The Last of Us” is one of the most vividly violent hours on television, which has the effect of putting the tender moments in the series in extraordinarily touching relief.
Unlike season one, the pacing drags at points and sometimes the impulse towards revenge and gratuitous combativeness becomes hard to empathize with. And no spoilers here, but there are dramatic season 2 pivots in the story arc that will make you question whether season three will be as good.
Most political thrillers, even the best of them like “House of Cards”, tend to take themselves really seriously. But the current state of domestic and international affairs right now is stressful enough without our entertainment reminding us how manipulative or sanctimonious politicians are.
“The Diplomat,” however, is the perfect cocktail of televised palace intrigue: Smart government machinations and tricky plot twists with dashes of frisky comedy and sexual tension. In short, “The Diplomat” is fun.
Keri Russell stars in the title role as Kate Wyler, a highly respected veteran of the foreign service. In the first season, Kate becomes the American ambassador to the United Kingdom, only to discover that she is being groomed and positioned for bigger things by higher ups and her insufferably meddling husband, Hal Wyler (Rufus Sewall).
To describe the second season would be to set off a series of spoilers, so I will respectfully refrain. Suffice to say, Kate proves herself time and time again to be the smartest one in the room, even while she is being manipulated. She unwittingly sets herself up for a promotion, although not the one she was originally expecting. There are so many noteworthy performances starting with Russell, who has found another great vehicle since her brilliant and dour turn in “The Americans.” Sewall is charming while being creepy, while David Gyasi is both commanding and vulnerable as Austin Dennison, the British foreign secretary and Kate’s mutual lust interest. The likes of Rory Kinnear, Allison Janney, and Michael McKean are also on hand to make the quick-fire script pop and glisten.
Giving new meaning to the term “work-life balance,” “Severence” spins the tale of a shady corporate employer, Lumon, that develops and uses “severance” technology on its own employees. Severance bifurcates an employee’s consciousness into one set of memories for home and another for the office, with never the two intended to meet. Lumon creates an exclusively company-focused mindset by insulating the office-bound employee mind from the outside world. Adam Scott stars as severed Mark S./Mark Scout who develops bonds with a motley crew of severed co-workers who collectively make up Lumon’s “MDR” department.
Season two ends where season one left off: with each “innie” member of the MDR unit getting a glimpse of their respective “outie” lives. If season one spends most of its time on innie and outie world building, season two follows the collision of these worlds. Scott gives an impressively dexterous performance as he shuttles between identities. The supporting cast includes all-stars like Christopher Walken and John Turturro as severed employees, and Patracia Arquette as an icy Lumon overseer who eventually goes rogue. Honorable mention goes to Tramell Tillman as the ridiculously uptight assistant manager, Milchick.
The most satisfying element of “Severance” is its quirky originality. Beyond the broad category of science fiction, “Severance” doesn’t fit neatly into any television genre and thus is not bound by many formulas or narrative conventions. In particular, the Lumon office building is a surreal labyrinth of fluorescent lights, sterile hallways, and twisted psycho-engineering lurking behind every door. This inventiveness reliably keeps viewers off balance and clueless as to what’s coming next, and the season two finale will leave you smacking your lips in anticipation of the next season.