We didn’t watch as much new TV this year as we usually do. Partly that’s because we are both increasingly busy killing it at other things, but mostly it’s because, frankly, the TV landscape is increasingly disillusioning. We are so far gone from the days when it seemed like streaming might crack the possibilities of the medium wide open and change them forever. It did, to be clear, but then the vast, rapacious conglomerates that control all TV decided that, actually, ambition and vision are for losers who don’t have a Scrooge McDuck money vault. It’s hard to want to watch a lot of new shows these days when more and more of it seems like little more than an indistinguishable slurry of “content”.
What do you do when you’re a TV critic getting jaded with modern TV? If you’re Ciara, you sail the seven seas of classic television and answer the siren call of the new only when it earns your interest. If you’re Dean, you just start shooting as much animation and stand-up directly into your veins as possible, because there, if nowhere else, are ambition and vision still alive and well. But you never give up on television, because when it’s good it still melts your face off.
We’re two days late this year, but considering we were months ahead of the Emmys last year, we’re sure you’ll forgive us. These, as far as we’re concerned, are the best shows of the most recent TV season (June 2023 – May 2024). As well as the classic drama and comedy awards, we also have two awards for reality, variety and documentary television, including game shows, professional wrestling and whatever Eric Andre is doing at any given minute. We picked our winners by consensus, so only shows we both watched were eligible to win, but we each picked a runner-up, regardless of whether the other has seen it.
You can find each of our full slates of nominees at the bottom of the post. We recommend checking them out if you’re looking for recommendations.
DRAMA
OUTSTANDING DRAMA SERIES – The Curse
Ciara: “Nathan Fielder’s first scripted show after making the brilliant reality/parody/documentary/comedy shows Nathan for You and The Rehearsal, The Curse was co-created with Benny Safdie, of the Safdie Brothers fame. This marriage of their two unique artistic sensibilities retains all of the anxiety and all of the humour of each of their work separately – a two for one proposition that emotionally simulates a panic attack or two. It’s a show that left me feeling really scuzzy and down, but, you know, happy about it. I did laugh a lot, although a lot of the stuff that might sound funny in abstract is played out as dark and sad: the small penis stuff made me want to cry.
Fielder and Emma Stone play a couple trying to get their own property show on HGTV, but unlike all those shows that already exist, this one would be about integrating into the community, creating a sustainable environment, and regeneration without gentrification. Fliplanthropy. It is simultaneously: a biting satire of certain kinds of ‘well-meaning’ rich people; a parody of property flipping shows; a drama about a disintegrating marriage; a psychological, bordering on supernatural, horror; a look at the class dynamics of environmentalism; and an exposé of the violence, discrimination and exploitation of Native Americans. (The exploiters think they’re good guys, ‘helping’.) It’s also about alcohol, and cuckoldry, and how we navigate our ethics when there’s a camera involved. It’s about religious conversion and Jewish identity. It’s about the morality of casinos. It will unsettle you deep in a place you weren’t sure was there, and you’ll have to live with that. Just in case it wasn’t clear, it’s the best show on television.”
Ciara’s Runner-Up: Sugar – “The main reason I do the Sundae Awards these days is to say ‘we are so back’ about Colin Farrell continuing to be a working actor. It’ll be The Penguin next year, set your clocks. Unless The Penguin sucks. Sugar, though, that’s a good show. We are so back.”
Dean’s Runner-Up: Baby Reindeer – “I was very hesitant to watch Baby Reindeer because I found its premise – a fictionalisation of writer-star Richard Gadd’s real-life stalking – so uncomfortable, but I’m glad I did, because it doesn’t shy away from all that’s ugly and rotten in its own concept. Instead, it grapples with it in ways that alternately reminded me of Nathan Fielder and I May Destroy You.”
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OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTOR IN A DRAMA – Nathan Fielder as Asher Siegel in The Curse
Ciara: “I love Nathan Fielder, but was sceptical that he could pull of a leading role in a scripted drama – not least because, I mean, is he even an actor? But he manages to more than hold his own opposite Emma Stone, one of the best screen actors currently living. A certain amount of his performance as Asher is an extension of his comic persona on Nathan for You and The Rehearsal – pulling all that is anxious and sad to the surface and making his do-gooder posture even more surface level – but he doesn’t coast on what he’s done well before. There’s been pathos to Fielder’s comedy before, but Asher is a deeply sad figure in a way that makes for genuine revelation.
It seems basic, but I was particularly taken with how good a scene partner Fielder was for other actors. The way you can see how any kind of discomfort or distress pierces through to his very soul, even as he maintains a shiny, blandly happy front – one that is designed not only to hide his emotions, but to stop the situation in its tracks, but fails on both counts. He’s a bundle of nerves barely holding it together, but there are only a handful of moments where he really expresses himself – each of which are searing. When he sees the tape of the way his wife Whitney talks about him: oh man, oh boy. That’s television.”
Ciara’s Runner-Up: Colin Farrell as John Sugar in Sugar – “Colin Farrell quietly contains the possibility of real menace while radiating moral goodness. I was surprised to see a Twitter user speculate that John Sugar might be an angel. But mostly, he resembles a detective in classic film noir. Match cuts of him and Humphrey Bogart manage not to feel like a stretch.”
Dean’s Runner-Up: Walton Goggins as Cooper Howard in Fallout – “No one else could possibly have played the two faces of Cooper Howard – before the war, a working cowboy actor, after the war, a radioactive zombie bounty hunter – as well as Walton Goggins and I’m glad I’ll never have to live in a world where he didn’t.”
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OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTRESS IN A DRAMA – Emma Stone as Whitney Siegel in The Curse
Dean: “The thing that a lot of people still don’t understand about Emma Stone, even after three Yorgos Lanthimos collaborations, is that she is a weird comedy freak. The red carpet was literally rolled out for her to become a conventional film star, but the more successful she becomes, the more she uses her clout to get bizarre and experimental projects off the ground. Many people found her teaming up with Nathan Fielder a bit of a left-field move, but not us. We watched Saturday Morning All Star Hits.
On first glance, Whitney might not seem like that much of a freak role, particularly compared to Stone’s virtuosic turn as Bella Baxter in Poor Things. She is a bracingly unpleasant portrait of a vain, self-obsessed trust fund kid ashamed of how her slumlord parents got their money, though not so ashamed she won’t spend it. But as the show goes on, it becomes clear that Whitney is not just a role Stone is playing, but a role Whitney is playing, and Whitney is as terrible at playing herself as Stone is terrific.
She’s so desperate to be seen as an artist, an activist and most of all an authentic human being, but seems to have no actual values. She knows it’s bad to call the cops on poor people, but not why, so she ends up paying for thousands of dollars in shoplifted designer jeans at a shop in her shitty retail development. Every time you think you’ve seen her true face, she peels it off, until you start to wonder if there’s a person under there at all. Haunting.”
Ciara’s Runner-Up: Anna Sawai as Lady Toda Mariko in Shōgun – “Mariko is a character full of contradictory complexities who plays her cards very close to her chest. She talks about putting your heart behind an eightfold fence. Anna Sawai understands this, understands the dignified detachment and stillness required to play the role authentically. But within that framework she uses the tiniest of facial expressions or vocal intonations to capture yearning, loyalty, defiance, amusement, suicidality – all sharp enough to cut.”
Dean’s Runner-Up: Sarika Sartsilpsupa as Lilly in DELETE – “I first saw Sarika Sartsilpsupa in the wonderful Thai romantic drama Happy Old Year and I was delighted to see her take the lead in this shockingly good series about a phone whose camera deletes people from existence. As a woman trapped – and not trapped – in an emotionally abusive marriage, her desperation and moral anguish are the heart of the show.”
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OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A DRAMA – Mark Lewis Jones as Gerry Dunn in Baby Reindeer
Dean: “Mark Lewis Jones – or ‘Rob Morgan from Stella’, as he’s known in my house – has long been one of Wales’ finest and most underrated character actors, a consistently delightful presence on my screen, and I got a big goofy grin when he showed up as Donny’s dad in Baby Reindeer.
Gerry Dunn is by far the funniest character in the show, effing and blinding down the phone at his son’s stalker in a thick Scottish accent, telling her he’ll cut her legs off. He’s put on leave from work after Martha falsely accuses him of having molested her as a child, not because of the accusation, but because of his response: ‘You know what your dad’s like. He doubled down on it. Told them he had a load of kids in a van outside.’
But then comes the turn: when Donny tells his parents he was raped, and he didn’t tell them in case they – by which he means his dad – thought less of him as a man. Gerry responds: ‘Would you think of me as less of one?’ Donny is baffled. Gerry says he grew up in the Catholic Church, and it’s honestly kind of a clunker of a line, but the way Jones plays it, how he looks in Donny’s eyes until it finally clicks, then drops his gaze as tears well in his eyes. Earlier, he batted away Donny’s arms when he went for a hug, insisting on a handshake, but this time, he stands up and throws his arms around his son, holding him tight. No words. None needed. It’s the best bit of acting he’s ever done, and I’ll never forget it.”
Ciara’s Runner-Up: Bennie Safdie as Dougie Schechter in The Curse – “Benny Safdie captures a real slimy grossness that most actors would be too vain to truly inhabit. There’s no vanity in Safdie’s performance. It’s hard to watch. It’s brilliant. I wanted to shout ‘get away from him!’ at the screen every time a woman interacted with him. Five stars.”
Dean’s Runner-Up: Brendan Fraser and Riley Shanahan as Cliff Steele / Robotman in Doom Patrol – “Brendan Fraser and Riley Shanahan have quietly been giving one of the more revelatory joint performances on television the last few years as the vocal and physical performer, respectively, of Cliff Steele, aka Robotman. The final shot of the series is Cliff looking in a car mirror and I will think of it forever, with a lump in my throat.”
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OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A DRAMA – Jessica Gunning as Martha Scott in Baby Reindeer
Ciara: “Martha is the villain of the piece – the woman stalking and harassing the protagonist – and Jessica Gunning plays her authentically terrifying and terrifyingly authentic. She rapidly snaps between affection and rage, sotto voce one minute and screaming the next, and it’s hard to know which is scarier. She is suffocating, overwhelming, inescapable. Gunning is a short woman, but she brings a physical presence to Martha that makes her feel menacingly strong: when Martha gropes Donny, it hardly occurs to you that Donny could easily push her off.
But Gunning doesn’t play Martha as a monster. Instead, she’s a deeply fragile creature, desperately lonely and with only an intermittent grasp on reality. She is unwell, and she is wounded. She lashes out and hurts others, but because she has been hurt before, she reasons herself out as the victim in all situations. This humanising part of Martha is most obvious at the beginning of the show, when she hangs out in the pub, telling blatantly fabricated stories about her life: she seems like a strange, lonely woman happy that someone has been nice to her for once. But Gunning is smart enough not to play her terror as a flip of a switch. That sadness and fragility and woundedness is threaded through even Martha’s darkest moments.”
Ciara’s Runner-Up: Amy Ryan as Melanie Matthews in Sugar – “Amy Ryan’s sly half-smile, how she alternately holds John Sugar at a protective distance, flirts with him with a real wit and subtlety, and invites him into emotional, even conspiratorial intimacy. On the page, we wouldn’t know if we should trust this character, but in Ryan’s hands, she feels like a life raft in this murky, mysterious world.”
Dean’s Runner-Up: Samantha Sloyan as Tamerlane Usher in The Fall of the House of Usher – “Samantha Sloyan was born to play tightly-wound psychopaths desperately clinging to a veneer of normalcy, and Tammy Usher might be the role of her lifetime. She’s so emotionally fucked up her kink is watching her husband have dinner with escorts because they’re capable of showing him affection. I’ve never seen someone carry so much tension in a blank expression that it looks like their face might rip open.”
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OUTSTANDING WRITING IN A DRAMA – Carrie Kemper for The Curse: “Pressure’s Looking Good So Far”
Dean: “Carrie Kemper has been severely underpraised for her role as a writer on The Curse, but that’s not why she’s getting this award. I just wanted to mention it at the top because she’s been part of Nathan Fielder’s production posse for a while, writing and producing on both the final season of Nathan for You and The Rehearsal, and it honestly pisses me off just how little credit she’s gotten for being part of the best show on television this year.
No, she’s getting this award for writing a tight, mean, painfully awkward episode that does more to set the tone of the show than its pilot. Dougie telling his date, in detail, about how he killed his wife by drink driving, while refusing to admit he had any responsibility. Asher fucking up his infiltration of the casino where he used to work so badly he has to contrive to spill Gatorade all over his ex-colleague in the least organic way possible.
But it’s the final sequence, when Asher and Whitney visit their ‘friend’ Cara’s art show that really kills. Whitney, so eager to seem worldly, so desperate to be seen as an artist, has absolutely no fucking clue what Cara is going for with any of her art, particularly the tent where Cara gives her audience slices of turkey and screams. Worse, Asher gets it just fine, and it’s the first time we see the shine properly come off Whitney’s self-regard, as the ugliness of her spirit burns through her forced smiles.”
Ciara’s Runner-Up: Sam Catlin & Donald Joh for Sugar: “Go Home” – “Here we are, the big reveal. I didn’t know Sugar would have a big reveal going in: I signed up for a detective neo-noir with Colin Farrell and some nice cars, and I ate that up happily. But when the reveal comes, it elevates the show into something stranger, sadder, and altogether more brilliant. Loved it.”
Dean’s Runner-Up: Kieran Fitzgerald for Fallout: “The Ghouls” – “The best episode of Fallout is the one where Lucy gets kidnapped by a surgical robot voiced by Matt Berry who tries to harvest her organs, while Cooper tries to break into the supermarket where she’s being held captive so he can rip off the drug dealers who live there. Far from its darkest episode, but certainly it’s most darkly funny.”
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OUTSTANDING DIRECTING IN A DRAMA – Josephine Bornebusch for Baby Reindeer: “Episode 7”
Ciara: “The episode before this one delivers a textbook kind of catharsis: Donny breaks down on stage and says all the things he’s been bottling up, gives a word-perfect speech about the complexities and contradictions of his experience as a male rape victim and, later, being stalked by a woman. He says all the things he has spent the whole season wanting to say. ‘Episode 7’ undercuts this by force: denying us the catharsis we thought we were getting. It’s a ‘fuck you’ to the idea that that speech was complexity and contradiction, rather than another tightly packaged story. That this show, no matter how layered it tries to be, could be more than a tightly packaged story.
This is captured most elegantly in how Martha’s stalking persists visually and aurally even after she’s imprisoned. Donny’s walls are papered in printouts of her emails, highlighted and arranged like a conspiracy board. He categorises her voice messages and sorts them into folders. He – we – listen to them as he walks around the city. And in its disturbing ending, it uses the visual grammar of the show’s opening scenes to frame Donny as having ‘become’ Martha – the hints seem Norman Bates-like, a man embodying his abuser. And like with Norman, there is pathos there, but no relief, and no catharsis. There’s no end in sight.”
Ciara’s Runner-Up: Nathan Fielder for The Curse: “Green Queen” – “Look: he flies away. What more can I say to you, truly? He flies away. Up into the air. It rocks.”
Dean’s Runner-Up: Omar Madha for Doom Patrol: “Immortimas Patrol” – “Three episodes out from its finale, Doom Patrol dropped a musical episode featuring two gay love duets – pop punk for the ladies, showtunes for the lads – and Brendan Fraser singing about jacking off on Christmas morning. It all culminates in a showstopper where the villain steals the show’s theme song for her big number while making the team shamble around like marionette zombies. Incredible.”
REALITY, VARIETY AND DOCUMENTARY
OUTSTANDING REALITY, VARIETY OR DOCUMENTARY SERIES – The Traitors (UK)
Ciara: “The Traitors is an addictive fizz of a show that doubles as a genuinely compelling study of human nature. A group of contestants are holed up in a castle, and secretly assigned as either a Traitor or a Faithful. They vote off suspected Traitors, and at night, the Traitors ‘murder’ Faithful contestants: by the end, if there are only Faithful left, they split the prize winnings, but if a Traitor remains, they get the money and the Faithful get nothing. I love BBC’s version of The Traitors in no small part because it manages to make contestants getting voted off a game show feel like someone is actually dying. I’ve heard other versions of the show are a bit more chill, to which I say: what’s the point of that, then? BBC Traitors is intense, edge-of-your-seat, just-one-more-episode-and-then-I’ll-go-to-bed television.
Its second season is incredible, topping the already excellent first in a dozen ways. The main villain tricks not just the other contestants, but us as the audience, into consistently underestimating him, manipulating trust relationships with both Faithful and his fellow Traitors so well that he leaves them thinking they hold all the cards. Luckily, one of the contestants has a superpower: his dad secretly had a whole second family, so he doesn’t trust a damn one of these motherfuckers. Along the way, it turns out that the Northern Irish lady has a son in here, a Columbo type arrives to crack the case, and way too many people think they’re much cleverer than they are. Except one of them. He’s fucking clever. It’s the best season of reality television ever made. We have not seen the like of it before and shall never see the like of it again. It’s nail-biting until the very end.”
Ciara’s Runner-Up: Wrestlers – “I’m so obsessed with this show that there is a real risk that I might start watching Ohio Valley Wrestling. I wrote about it for Current Affairs, but I didn’t mention the first scene I saw, which sold me: Mr. Pectacular walks into Al Snow’s office, basically drops a promo about why he should be champ, walks out, and when the camera guy asks what that was about Al goes ‘fuck if I know.’ Art.”
Dean’s Runner-Up: American Conspiracy: The Octopus Murders – “Journalist Christian Hansen and documentarian Zachary Treitz spent a decade reinvestigating the mysterious death of journalist Danny Casolaro in 1991, while he was investigating a criminal conspiracy he called ‘the Octopus’. Hansen bears a striking resemblance to Casolaro and plays him in reenactments, which gets trippy as hell as they retrace Casolaro’s steps and the lines between past and present begin to blur.”
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OUTSTANDING REALITY, VARIETY OR DOCUMENTARY SPECIAL – Dusty Slay: Workin’ Man
Dean: “‘I like to tell people we’re having a good time. You know, I don’t like to ask. Lot of comics come out here, they go, are we having a good time? Not me, I can’t risk it.’
I will admit that I initially put on Dusty Slay: Workin’ Man because I was half-convinced he was David Cross in character as a hick comedian, but I kept watching because, unlike any of David Cross’s recent stand-up, I couldn’t stop laughing. It feels, in its classic simplicity, like a mirror to John Mulaney’s The Comeback Kid, but instead of growing up wealthy and Catholic in a Chicago brownstone, Dusty Slay grew up poor and evangelical in an Alabama trailer park.
Joke density is something we value very highly here at the Sundae, and his Workin’ Man set is pound for pound one of the funniest I’ve seen in years, and I have watched a lot of stand-up in the last while. He’s gross, but not gross-out, talking about the joys of smoking, dipping and not washing your hands. He does like twenty minutes riffing on the lyrics of country songs, and it never feels like low-hanging fruit because it clearly comes from his deep love of the genre.
But it’s the way he keeps layering jokes on top of each other that makes it truly brilliant, full of quick-draw callbacks in the middle of other jokes, like veins of syrup in ice cream. One I know I’ll return to again and again.”
Ciara’s Runner-Up: Russell Brand: In Plain Sight – “A documentary that not only exposes Russell Brand as a monster, but indicts a culture that enabled him, shining a spotlight on that which we had chosen not to see. The way it incorporates clips from his stand-up, juxtaposed with his victims’ accounts, is truly disturbing.”
Dean’s Runner-Up: Joe Pera: Slow & Steady – “This was Joe Pera’s first standup special and my first exposure to his ‘extremely old man who is in his mid-thirties’ persona. He’s not as sweet here as in his adult swim show Joe Pera Talks with You (which I watched subsequently), and that’s what gives it kick. I especially loved him ragging on his crowd for botching an audience participation bit.”
COMEDY
OUTSTANDING COMEDY SERIES – The Righteous Gemstones
Dean: “The Righteous Gemstones has been excellent from the start, but it really found itself in its third season, striking the perfect balance between its goofy comedic sensibilities and drama / thriller narrative structures. The Gemstone siblings finally get the power and control they want as Eli steps back from the church, only to immediately start fucking everything up. Because of course they do. They’re awful.
The overarching storyline is the intra-family conflict between the Gemstones and their cousins, the Montgomery’s, who used to have a snake handling church but now are doomsday prepping Christofascists after losing all their money in a Y2K scam Eli ran – with the full knowledge and support of Aimee-Leigh, no more the saintly figure of previous seasons. At the heart of it is the relationship between Eli and his sister May-May, living alone in their old snake handling church since her sons went off to their dad Steve Zahn’s compound. But the comedic throughline is incredibly childish rivalry between the Gemstones and their cousins, played wonderfully by Lukas Haas and former strongman Robert Oberst, who immediately establishes himself as a delightful screen performer.
It features such wonders as Uncle Baby Billy pitching both a game show (great idea) and an Aimee-Leigh hologram (absolutely horrifying), BJ getting into a brutal fistfight with an incredibly naked man, and so much crushing of objects, cars and even buildings with a monster truck that it would feel indulgent if it wasn’t such propulsive fun every time. I hope this show airs forever.”
Ciara’s Runner-Up: The Bear – “The second season of The Bear is a big premise shaker-upper, but it pays off big time. Also, note for all the haters saying The Bear isn’t a comedy: what about when Pete brought an eighth fish to Seven Fishes? Check and mate.”
Dean’s Runner-Up: What We Do in the Shadows – “What We Do in the Shadows finally pulled the trigger on Guillermo becoming a vampire… only the gun jams and he gets stuck halfway. Then he finds out Nandor will murder-suicide him if he finds out another vampire turned him. It’s such an exquisite, queasy arc for the season, and also they do a roast of Laszlo because they think he’s depressed, but he was just taking a really long time to remember something.”
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OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTOR IN A COMEDY – Harvey Guillén as Guillermo de la Cruz in What We Do in the Shadows
Dean: “Harvey Guillén has been fantastic on What We Do in the Shadows since day one, but he has often lacked for opportunities to really stretch his acting muscles with Guillermo so often stuck in the role of the nagging voice of reason in a house full of delusional, narcissistic vampires who point blank refuse to meet the world halfway, or even learn how to use a phone. So it was a thrill to watch him get as close as a teddy bear like Guillermo can to breaking bad this season after he gets Derek to turn him into a vampire and it doesn’t even work right.
Trying to keep his secret from Nandor even as Nadja, Laszlo, a largely indifferent Colin Robinson and even the Baron find out is essentially the most high-stakes farce ever, like if Frasier had to throw a dinner party under threat of murder-suicide every day. Guillén plays his constate state of desperate anxiety so viscerally you can feel it in his body language even when he’s hiding it on his face.
But it’s the terrible reality of finally getting everything you want that gives Guillén his biggest chance to flex: it’s actually scary how quickly he turns into a bloodthirsty monster as soon as he’s fully turned, and just as harrowing when he realises he can’t do this. Killing innocent people just to satisfy his own bloodlust makes him sicker than eating human food and his despair hits like a ton of bricks.”
Ciara’s Runner-Up: Martin Short as Oliver Putnam in Only Murders in the Building – “In season three of Only Murders, Martin Short runs the gamut from his most absurd – his sheer enthusiasm for his musical Death Razzle Dazzle, in which the chief murder subjects are a trio of babies – to his most heartfelt: the joy and pain of his falling in love with Meryl Streep’s Loretta sticks in my ribs.”
Dean’s Runner-Up: John Goodman as Eli Gemstone in The Righteous Gemstones – “Every second John Goodman is on screen is a gift to humanity and he was terrific in the third season of The Righteous Gemstones, as Eli tries to step back from the church and hand over the reins to his idiot children, while connecting with his grandson and rebuilding his relationship with his estranged sister.”
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OUTSTANDING LEAD ACTRESS IN A COMEDY – Natasia Demetriou as Nadja of Antipaxos in What We Do in the Shadows
Ciara: “Natasia Demetriou continues to be one of the best doing it, and if you want to know why, look no further than her discovering that there’s a Little Antipaxos in Staten Island. That’s the island Nadja comes from, and Demetriou delivers lines that describe its sheer misery – in Antipaxos and its Staten Island miniature – with a level of good cheer and delight that is all the funnier for her refusal to wink, to acknowledge the irony. ‘So much cheap crap and old fish – it’s like looking out the window of my childhood home!’ she exclaims, and her tone doesn’t change between set-up and punchline. She brags about Antipaxan food and then vomits into a bin when she eats it, but she no-sells it, putting the skewer back and saying the vendor can still sell the rest.
She is essentially adopting into a family in Little Antipaxos, who remind her of home and make her feel like she truly belongs. Demetriou really makes you feel like this a big deal for Nadja, that this is a transformative moment, which makes it all the funnier when, of course, she ends up draining their blood with her vampire friends. Ah well.”
Ciara’s Runner-Up: Quinta Brunson as Janine Teagues in Abbott Elementary – “Janine gets a job working for the school district, and it changes her role on the show in a couple of big ways. She’s still an energiser bunny, but she gets mired enough in bureaucracy to have to bend the rules a bit, no matter how much she loves the rules, and misses teaching so much that she goes a little insane. It emerges very naturally from what Brunson established in previous seasons, and she manages to remain the heart of Abbott Elementary even when she no longer works at Abbott Elementary.”
Dean’s Runner-Up: Abbi Jacobson as Princess Bean in Disenchantment – “Disenchantment went out on a high with its cracking final season, and none of the cast distinguished themselves more than Abbi Jacobson, as Bean dealt with first love, fresh loss and her most terrifying enemy yet: herself.”
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OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTOR IN A COMEDY – Walton Goggins as Baby Billy Freeman in The Righteous Gemstones
Ciara: “In season three of The Righteous Gemstones, Uncle Baby Billy gets what he’s always wanted: to be a game show host. That’s right, Baby Billy’s Bible Bonkers is a-go: it’s basically Family Feud (Fortunes, over here) but about the Bible trivia, but don’t tell Baby Billy that. It’s my favourite thing ever. I would die for it.
Walton Goggins is a great actor, and Baby Billy is his greatest role. And in this season of Righteous Gemstones, with its forays into more dramatic territory, he was consistently hilarious. And ultimately, that’s the thing that matters most.”
Ciara’s Runner-Up: Nicholas Lyndhurst as Alan Cornwall in Frasier – “I was extremely sceptical of Frasier having a best friend on New Frasier that was never mentioned on Frasier or Cheers, but Nicholas Lyndhurst is a perfect comic partner for Kelsey Grammar, in part due to the rhyming comedic sensibilities of Frasier and Only Fools and Horses. Alan trying to convince Lilith he was at their wedding was some of the hardest I’ve laughed this year.”
Dean’s Runner-Up: Nathan Dales as Daryl in Letterkenny – “Letterkenny’s final season finally gave Daryl, and Nathan Dales, the spotlight in a fantastic storyline where he finds some self-worth for the first time ever after killing at a comedy night – and begins to question if his friends really support him. His set at MoDean’s is hilarious, but the hurt on his face when Katy mocks him for thinking he’s funny. Jesus Christ.”
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OUTSTANDING SUPPORTING ACTRESS IN A COMEDY – Kristen Johnston as May-May Montgomery & Edi Patterson as Judy Gemstone in The Righteous Gemstones
Dean: “Kristen Johnston is one of the most criminally underrated actresses of her generation and Edi Patterson has been a revelation since she broke out on Vice Principals, but they won this award for the two separate occasions in season three where May-May karate chops Judy in the throat. Five stars.”
Ciara’s Runner-Up: Ayo Edebiri as Sydney Adamu in The Bear – “Ireland’s own Ayo Edebiri shines in The Bear’s second season, gone from Carmy’s junior to his equal partner, and so much more accountable for all the farcical shenanigans that go into opening a restaurant. She rocks. I love her.”
Dean’s Runner-Up: Lauren Tom as Amy Wong in Futurama – “Futurama used timey-wimey bullshit to great effect to age the characters into their forties, and no one benefited more than Amy, now mother to her and Kif’s kids. Lauren Tom does an amazing job of credibly selling her transition from party girl to, shockingly, the wisest and most mature of the Planet Express crew.”
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OUTSTANDING WRITING IN A COMEDY – Rob McElhenney, Charlie Day & Glenn Howerton for It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia: “The Gang Goes Bowling”
Ciara: “It’s Always Sunny remains my favourite TV show of all time. It is burned into the fabric of my DNA. That could easily mean I watch new episodes with rose-tinted glasses, but, I mean, a substantial part of my brain is just bits from The Simpsons and catching a glimpse of a new episode of that show makes my skin crawl. No, Always Sunny is just, unlike most currently airing shows with a ‘legacy’ section on its Wikipedia page, still good.
‘The Gang Goes Bowling’ is pretty much classic Sunny: a battle of the sexes in a bowling alley, Dee is playing with a team set up by the Waitress, and despite only being invited because their original fourth couldn’t make it, she immediately assumes that she is the leader. The guys, meanwhile, insist that they have better things to do than bowl before showing up to humiliate Dee and prove women’s inferiority. The set-up creates an excellent showcase for some of the show’s recurring minor characters – Artemis, Gail the Snail, the McPoyles – and delightfully centres the psychological terror in Dennis and Dee’s relationship. It riffs on The Big Lebowski without ever hokeily making overt references. It has instantly classic examples of Sunny’s traditional gags – a wonderful cut to the title, for one – and has a bit where, after Dee says they’ll be holding their ding-dongs all night, each of the guys one by one acknowledges that were touching their penis at that exact moment. I hope it runs forever.”
Ciara’s Runner-Up: Siena Streiber & Pete Swanson for Only Murders in the Building: “Opening Night” – “The patter song that Steve Martin delivers in this episode is the best thing ever written, operating at a classic Simpsons level of both perfect and perfectly hacky. ‘Has my inspection been too cursory? Should I look outside this nursery?’ And it is all the better because the script primes you for total disaster.”
Dean’s Runner-Up: John Carcieri & Danny McBride for The Righteous Gemstones: “Interlude III” – “The third of the show’s seasonal flashback episodes was its best yet for two reasons. First, it finally put a big fucking crack in the angelic image of the late Aimee-Leigh. Second, it made, of all people, Amber and Judy’s relationship as teenagers both its emotional throughline and comedic spine.”
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OUTSTANDING DIRECTING IN A COMEDY – Tig Fong for What We Do in the Shadows: “Exit Interview”
Dean: “Five seasons of What We Do in the Shadows were building to this. First, the simmering conflict between Guillermo and Nandor finally comes to a head and Guillermo has to go on the run from a murderous Nandor, enraged Guillermo that has shamed him by getting turned by Derek. It’s a legitimately tense, scary scenario, which just makes it all the funnier that Colin Robinson keeps trying to conduct Guillermo’s exit interview, and that the others give Guillermo’s location away by constantly visiting him (though it is actually quite sweet that Nadja seems genuinely sad to see Guillermo go, one way or the other).
Second, he and Nandor reconcile, and Guillermo finally becomes a full vampire after Nandor figures out the extremely obvious solution to why he’s stuck half-way (he hasn’t even drunk any blood yet) after all the ostensibly smarter characters completely failed. It’s such a triumphant moment for Guillermo… until he goes on his first rampage and realises he has no appetite for murder. Finally, the revelation of why Nandor has been putting off turning him: he’s known all along that Guillermo is too soft-hearted to be a remorseless killer. It’s a brilliant twist because it shows he knows and cares about Guillermo more than he admits, but doesn’t undercut his selfishness in stringing him along for all the years: after all, he could have told Guillermo at any time.
It is a preposterously elegant climax to the overarching story of the entire series, and I am so excited to see how the final season plays out.”
Ciara’s Runner-Up: Christopher Storer for The Bear: “Forks” – “I mean, this episode manages to make cleaning forks a profound and meaningful act. But also, the best use of a Taylor Swift song yet conceived of in visual media is Richie blasting ‘Love Story’ in the car driving home as he has finally learned why he should give a shit about fine dining.”
Dean’s Runner-Up: Ryan Mattos for Bob’s Burgers: “The Amazing Rudy” – “Bob’s Burgers has one of the best ensembles in an animated sitcom ever, so it’s crazy it took fourteen seasons to do a day-in-the-life episode about a supporting character. But thank God they did, and thank God they chose Regular-Sized Rudy for an incredibly sweet, sad episode about trying to hold his family together long after his parents’ divorce.”
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The Sundae 