2024 Emmy Predictions: Five Series Most Likely To Survive Emmy’s Cruel Summer

I know. I know. It’s way, way too early to start talking about the 2024 Emmy Awards.

After all, thanks to the strike-afflicted summer, we haven’t even had the 2023 Emmys yet. We don’t know how many Emmys Succession will win. We don’t know if Ted Lasso can really three-peat or if Abbott Elementary or The Bear will steal its thunder. We don’t know which Netflix limited series — Dahmer or Beef — will take home the most limited series trophies. And we won’t know any of that until… groan… Monday, January 15.

Honestly, had it not been the 75th anniversary of the Emmys or the final season of Succession, then I would just have preferred a Golden Globes-like press conference just to clear the slate. But I understand why the delay and why the late date.

Let’s just hope things go well with the strike negotiations.

So, looking forward to the 2024 Emmy Awards, we already have something of a contenders list, certainly some much more serious than others. The Emmy eligibility window runs June 1 through May 31 of the following year, so everything that debuted during the summer is eligible for next year’s Emmys. Unfortunately, most of what debuted during the summer either critically bombed or failed to land in a compelling way.

Without calling out shows that bombed, allow me to focus on the positive.

First, today marks the first day of the 2024 Emmy season where we are updating the Emmy Tracker (seen on the right-hand side of AD TV). We update this weekly with series that have debuted up to that point. We’re cheating a little this week by including The Morning Show, but it does debut next Wednesday. Honestly, we just needed something else in the Drama Series categories to keep things interesting. Many of these contenders will likely disappear by spring, but for now, here they are!

Second, here are five series that seem best poised to make it to the 2024 Emmy Awards in some fashion. Some could emerge as Emmy frontrunners. You just never know what the rest of this strike-afflicted season will bring…

The Bear (FX)

Last year, FX’s The Bear dropped all episodes in an early summer slot, and people (namely Film Twitter) could not stop raving about the series. Phrases like “best television of the last 10 years” rained down like dollar bills at a strip club. For me, season one was a mixed bag, but it ultimately became a series I immensely respected. Season two flipped the script by shifting the focus from Carmy’s (Jeremy Allen White) desperate attempts to keep The Original Beef open to his determination to fashion a fine dining restaurant of his own. By redirecting each member of the extraordinarily talented ensemble toward self-improvement, The Bear‘s second season became fine dining all on its own. It was so good, in fact, that it wildly increased my estimation of its first season. Every episode feels like a seven course meal, dropping buzzy and engaging character-driven moments across the entire season. It peppered in guest star cameos (Olivia Colman, Will Poulter) that didn’t feel like showboating. It gave us an hour of television (the “Seven Fishes” episode) that ranked positively with most films, including a better Jamie Lee Curtis performance than the one for which she won the Oscar. Finally, it managed to even tap into the Taylor Swift / Eras Tour phenomenon by employing a brilliant “Love Story” needle drop.

Season two of The Bear pushed its first season into what’s widely considered a second place to Ted Lasso at this year’s Emmys. Naturally, it emerges summer 2023 as the front runner for the 2024 Comedy Series Emmy.

Only Murders in the Building (Hulu)

Only Murders in the Building took a bit of a step back Emmy-wise in its second season. That makes sense as some fans of the first season cooled on its admittedly meandering sophomore outing. Still, it is nominated for Comedy Series and Comedy Writing, missing on last year’s directing nomination and, most surprisingly, a bid for Steve Martin. However, season three, which wraps in early October, so far feels like a step up in quality, partially thanks to two extremely well received performances from new faces Meryl Streep and Paul Rudd. Rather than serving as stunt casting, the new cast additions inhabited extremely well written characters with Streep yet again giving a tremendous performance. Audiences gushed over her episode three song “Look for the Light,” a duet with Ashley Park. The script also gives Paul Rudd the chance to play against type as the bad guy, and he takes full advantage of the opportunity. This seems to be another case, at least for now, of a rising tide lifts all boats. Right now, it appears that Only Murders will return to the Comedy Series race and potentially return to season one’s Emmy heights.

Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty (HBO)

Winning Time‘s first season debuted during the prime spring window of the 2022 Emmy season. It appeared to have everything going for it with a star-studded cast and a pedigreed filmmaking team behind it, led by Oscar-winner Adam McKay. Reviews were positive if not glowing, and audiences seemed to like what they saw. Plus, HBO spent lavishly around Los Angeles, seemingly hoping to align hometown adoration for the basketball team with its newest prestige drama. And, for a while, it looked like the strategy was working… until the nominations came out. The series only received a single nomination for its cinematography. So it may be strange to see us include season two in our survivors list. Reviews for the new season were roughly similar, and ratings appear slightly down from its freshman season. However, with the strike likely impacting production throughout the rest of the 2023 Emmy season, the potential number of Drama contenders could come in light. We’ll soon have new seasons of The Gilded Age (also a recipient of a single Emmy nom in the 2022 season) and The Crown presumably joined in 2024 by a new season of House of the Dragon (still filming against pre-strike scripts and a non-SAG cast) and… Something else? The field definitely looks thin, and that gives HBO ample opportunity to campaign Winning Time. Plus, voting audiences will have time to catch up on the entire series. I mean, what else is out there?

The Righteous Gemstones (HBO)

The Righteous Gemstones received its first (and only) Emmy nomination in 2022 (Stunt Coordination for a Comedy Series or Variety Program), which isn’t surprising. Season one didn’t exactly wow critics, but the series maintained a healthy cult following and justified second and eventually third seasons. Each season seemed to improve upon the last with the recent third season receiving near-widespread critical acclaim. We wholeheartedly endorse season three as a legitimate Emmy contender across the board. The new season feels both go-for-broke and intensely focused, adopting something of a comic take on Succession. Whatever’s in the water, it works like gangbusters led by fantastic comic performances from John Goodman, Danny McBride, and most importantly the brilliant Edi Patterson. Patterson’s comedic mania should, as with Succession’s Sarah Snook, be elevated to lead actress contention. Here’s hoping the upcoming guild season provides some recognition for this increasingly funny series. It will need some kind of momentum on which to build for a 2024 Emmy campaign.

Ahsoka (Disney+)

When the latest Star Wars series premiered in August, no one seemed particularly jazzed about Ahsoka. Reviews were kind, but there just didn’t seem to be much buzz about the Rosario Dawson-led series. That all changed over the past two weeks as the series started rolling out some hotly anticipated cameos, namely prequel trilogy star Hayden Christensen. Weirdly, there’s a lot of revisionist history rolling out with his work on Ahsoka with many online proclaiming the star actually gave a strong prequel series performance. That’s not how I remembered it, but we’ll move on. Disney smartly chose to screen the Dave Feloni-directed fifth episode in theaters nationwide for a fan event, and it fully delivered what they undoubtedly anticipated. Fans poured out of screenings with the kind of effusive praise for the episode that Star Wars series have largely avoided since the second season of The Mandalorian. If this is the only Star Wars series up their sleeve for the rest of the 2024 Emmy season, then Disney will wield its own Force to will Ahsoka into the limited series race. Pulling performances into the Emmy race would be a stretch, but the series and its crafts are very much in contention. After all, Disney managed a nomination for the lesser reviewed Obi-Wan Kenobi limited series this year. Seems like the Television Academy always has a soft spot for product from a galaxy far, far away.