Assessing the Seemingly Unlimited Limited Series Emmy Contenders

This week, the Cooler Game looks at the 2019 crop of Limited Series Emmy contenders including HBO’s Sharp Objects, Showtime’s Escape at Dannemora, and FX’s Fosse/Verdon.

Over the last two weeks, we’ve been pouring through our early 2019 Emmy season analysis with the Comedy and Drama races. Our thoughts, hypotheses, and random musings continued to update the Emmy Tracker at Awards Daily TV. In our final week, it’s time to tackle the Limited Series / TV Movie categories. In past year’s, these categories bursted at the seams with potential contenders. Does this year’s crop of Limited Series hold true without a major Ryan Murphy offering?

HBO’s Sharp Objects made a big splash last summer and seemed to emerge as a front runner in several races including Actress in a Limited Series. But it’s sometimes not a good thing to be out of the gate first. Since Sharp Objects premiered, we’ve seen a swelling of support for Showtime’s Escape at Dannemora with lead actress Patricia Arquette tying or beating Amy Adams in several surprise wins. Netflix’s Maniac emerged from the fall as a divisive awards contender. Will Netflix’s heavy campaign purse push stars Emma Stone or Jonah Hill forward at Emmy time? TNT received some awards attention last year for their Limited Series The Alienist, so will they repeat with Patty Jenkins’ I Am the Night? And what upcoming Spring premieres (FX’s Fosse/Verdon, HBO’s Chernobyl) will help fill out the typically hot Limited Series categories?

But first, it’s Oscar time! After a challenging season, we’re finally putting pen to paper with our official 2019 Oscar predictions. Today’s version of them, anyway. We also briefly chat about the bizarre case of Empire’s Jussie Smollett.

We close our podcast, as always, with the Flash Forward to the media we’re most anticipating in the upcoming week.

Next week, we’re kicking off our fan-driven Our Favorite Movies contributions with listener Jim Keller’s selection, Sophie’s Choice. Be sure to watch this laugh-riot before next week’s podcast drops!

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