The drama category was a tight one at the 2021 Emmy Awards, with eight prestige offerings to choose from.
The Boys, Bridgerton, The Crown, The Handmaid’s Tale, Lovecraft Country, The Mandalorian, Pose and This Is Us were all up for the Outstanding Drama Series prize, with The Crown taking home the award in the end.
Netflix’s Bridgerton has seen meteoric success since its debut on the streamer at the end of 2020, quickly becoming the platforms most-streamed series of all time. Based on Julia Quinn’s best-selling novels, the series is a raunchy, Regency-era drama from Grey’s Anatomy creator Shonda Rhimes. It has already been renewed for a third and fourth season despite its second season not yet airing.
Meanwhile, dystopian nightmare The Handmaid’s Tale aired its fourth season in 2021 and will return for a fifth and likely more beyond that. Based on Margaret Atwood’s novel of the same name, the plot centres on what happens when religious zealots overthrow the government and enslave fertile women in order to use them as unwilling surrogates for the elite who cannot conceive on their own.
Pose continued to make history through its third and final season, with lead actress Mj Rodriguez being nominated in the lead actress in a drama category — making her the first trans woman to hold such an honour.
The series itself, which explores the LGBTQIA+ ballroom scene in 1980s-1990s New York, as well as the AIDS epidemic, is inspired by true events and features the largest cast of transgender actors ever to appear as series regulars on a scripted show.
Elsewhere, The Mandalorian is set in the Star War’s universe after the fall of the Empire and before the emergence of the First Order. We follow the travels of a lone gunfighter, Din Djarin, in the outer reaches of the galaxy far from the authority of the New Republic.
The series takes place about five years after the events of Star Wars: Episode VI Return of the Jedi and follows Djarin as he is hired by remnant Imperial forces to retrieve the child Grogu but instead goes on the run to protect him. While looking to reunite Grogu with his kind, they are pursued by Moff Gideon, who wants to use Grogu’s connection to the Force for his own nefarious ends.
The show represented just one of Disney’s staggering 146 nominations at this year’s event.
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