The Soft Devastation of Netflix’s Emmy Morning
107 nominations look incredible … until you see what they’re actually for.
No matter how you parse the math, Netflix got a lot of nominations for the 2024 Primetime Emmy Awards. One hundred and seven, to be exact, up a few from last year’s total of 103. This either puts them at the top of the list of most nominated platforms (if we’re counting all the separate arms of the Disney Multimedia Entertainment Empire LLC as distinct entities) or second if we lump Disney+, FX, Hulu, and ABC together. The last several Emmys have seen Netflix and HBO jockeying for position at the top of the heap, and with HBO having a decidedly down year — 91 puny noms after last year’s 127, which led the field — you’d think Netflix would be doing an end-zone dance. And perhaps outwardly, they are. But drill down on those 107 nominations to the top categories on the ballot, and you start to walk away with a different impression. One in which Netflix is losing ground to the likes of FX and Apple, and almost none of its major nominees are coming back.
Every article about the Emmy nominations this morning led with FX for good reason: They boasted the year’s most nominated drama (Shōgun, 25 nods), the year’s most nominated comedy (The Bear, 23 nods), and the year’s second-most nominated limited series (Fargo, 15 nods). More importantly, they also dominated the most high-profile categories on the ballot. Counting only the Best Series, Acting, Writing, and Directing categories — which is to say, the ones that will be presented on the Primetime Emmys telecast in September — FX emerges with a commanding lead of 39 nominations, with Netflix tied with Apple TV+ in a distant second with 28 nods apiece. And that number hangs differently on Netflix, for whom 21 of those 28 nominations come for three shows (The Crown, Baby Reindeer, and Ripley) that are not set to return with new episodes.
Meanwhile, the other networks and platforms are thriving. Hulu’s Only Murders in the Building pulled in 21 nominations (eight in the major categories) for its musical-themed third season. Amazon’s Prime Video had a breakthrough year in the Drama categories, with both Fallout and Mr. and Mrs. Smith landing Outstanding Series nominations, and the latter pulling in seven acting nominations. Apple TV+’s Slow Horses finally caught the Emmys’ attention in its third season, with nine total nominations (six in the major categories) under its belt.
And then there’s The Morning Show, which sent Reese Witherspoon to both space and the Capitol steps on January 6th in the same season and utterly stomped its way through the acting categories this year. Last week, I predicted that TMS would have a nomination morning akin to The Handmaid’s Tale in 2021, when that show pulled in eight acting nominations for its fourth season, well past the point when the critical bloom was off the rose. It turns out I undersold: TMS scored TEN acting nominations for (deep breath) Jennifer Aniston, Reese Witherspoon, Jon Hamm, Billy Crudup, Mark Duplass, Greta Lee, Nicole Beharie, Karen Pittman, Holland Taylor, and Marcia Gay Harden. That’s still short of Succession’s Emmy-record 14 acting nominations in 2022, but sit back and think about the critical acclaim afforded to Succession and, conversely, the lack of critical acclaim The Morning Show. Would you say it’s only four nominations’ worth of difference? I don’t think so!
The most troubling aspect of these nominations for Netflix has to be that almost none of their nominated shows are coming back. All of the above-mentioned will be returning with new seasons. (The Bear just dropped its third a few weeks ago, and Shōgun announced unexpected plans for season two; Only Murders in the Building returns on August 27th; Slow Horses on September 4th; The Morning Show is in production on season four; Fallout will be back with season two sooner or later.) Meanwhile, The Crown very much feels like the end of an era for the streaming giant as the last of its major Emmy behemoths, a list that in the past included shows like House of Cards, Orange Is the New Black, Ozark, and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Of its returning shows, only Stranger Things belongs in the category of sustained Emmys success, and even its last haul was a disappointing five nods in 2023.
Bridgerton’s most recent season will surely campaign next year, but that’s a show whose initial surge of Emmy love (12 nominations in 2021) quickly faded (only three in 2022), and whose only Emmy-nominated actor, Rege-Jean Page, exited the show after one year. Wednesday is Netflix’s one returning show that can claim to have any Emmy heat (13 nominations in 2023 including Outstanding Comedy Series and Jenna Ortega in Lead Actress), but the rest of the returning slate is pretty grim from an Emmys perspective. Emily in Paris? A surprise Outstanding Comedy nod in 2021 got it a lot of attention, but that show only got four total Emmy nominations for its next two seasons. The Diplomat? The Watcher? One nomination apiece in 2023. Squid Game can’t come back soon enough, but it will be tough to retain the buzz it once had after more than three years away.
The Emmy success of Baby Reindeer and Ripley show that Netflix still has some juice in the limited series sphere, but even there, it’s facing newly emboldened competition. Lessons in Chemistry, which pulled in 10 nominations (five in the major categories, including acting nods for Brie Larson, Aja Naomi King, and Lewis Pullman), is Apple TV+’s first-ever nomination in Limited Series. Overall, Apple’s surge up the Emmys leaderboard to 70 nominations (it had 54 last year) is one of this year’s bigger stories. Even beyond The Morning Show and Slow Horses, Apple boasts a deep bench of successes: Maya Rudolph’s star power was enough to draw a nomination for her performance in Loot; the Florida-set social-climbing comedy Palm Royale nabbed 11 noms including nods for Kristen Wiig, Carol Burnett (her 24th, setting the record as the oldest female comedy acting nominee at 91) and Outstanding Comedy Series. Idris Elba was the recipient of maybe the most surprising acting nomination of the year for his performance on Hijack.
Given the slightest bit of scrutiny, Netflix’s 107 nominations look like a mirage. It’s a figure bolstered by the proverbial fire hose of content with which Netflix continues to bombard the TV marketplace. Four nominations for the limited series All the Light We Cannot See. Four nods for Love on the Spectrum. Three nods (not enough!) for Squid Game: The Challenge. Three more for “We Are the World” documentary The Greatest Night in Pop. Five for the docuseries Beckham. Three apiece for Black Mirror, The Gentlemen, and The Upshaws. Two for Blue Eye Samurai. Two for Avatar: The Last Airbender. Two for Queer Eye. Two for Trevor Noah’s special. And both Jerry Seinfeld (Unfrosted, nominated for Best TV Movie) and Dave Chappelle (two nods for his The Dreamer special) even made it onto the ballot. These nominations add up, in dribs and drabs, to a third of Netflix’s total nomination haul. What they don’t do is describe a streaming platform that still has a hold on the zeitgeist.
If there’s a silver lining for Netflix on this Emmy nomination day, it’s that things look marginally worse for HBO. Thirty-five of those 91 nominations come from just two shows: True Detective: Night Country and Hacks. It’s a far cry from last year, when HBO boasted four Outstanding Drama Series nominees (including The White Lotus, The Last of Us, and House of the Dragon) and ran roughshod over the Emmy ceremony with Succession’s final-season sweep. This once-fierce rivalry for the soul of prestige TV has been reduced this year to a pair of aged giants trying to keep pace with the aggro-culinary and lunatic-girlboss shows that have captured TV’s current moment.
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