Hollywood’s top television stars will strut their stuff on the red carpet Monday at the glittering 70th Emmys Awards — a duel between record-breaker “Game of Thrones” and last year’s big winner “The Handmaid’s Tale.”
Both shows have already picked up some Emmys hardware: HBO’s blood-spattered smash hit won seven statuettes in technical categories at the Creative Arts Emmys a week ago, while Hulu’s “Handmaid” scooped up three.
And both are likely to add to that haul at the Primetime Emmys, television’s answer to the Oscars, at the Microsoft Theater in downtown Los Angeles.
But will “GoT” — which was ineligible last year — reclaim the best drama series throne, or will “Handmaid” — the first streaming series to take the coveted prize — be a repeat winner?
For Tim Gray, the awards editor and senior vice president of top entertainment news outlet Variety, “Handmaid” — a bleak portrait of a future dystopian America where women are brutally oppressed — has the edge.
“I just feel like ‘Handmaid’s Tale’ is, kind of, of the moment as it addresses a lot of concerns that people have now,” Gray told AFP. “I just think it’s their year.”
The show, based on Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel, seems especially timely in the age of #MeToo, a movement that erupted shortly after last year’s Emmys.
Others in the best drama race include dark horse pick “The Americans” — the gripping FX thriller about Soviet sleeper agents in the United States that has been a favourite of critics and fans, but not the 22,000-plus Emmy voters, for years.
