TVision: Cable shows may garner Emmy recognition

Courtesy of scifi.com

Even though it’s patently obvious that most of the finest television shows these days are being produced on cable outlets, that’s seldom reflected in the Emmy nominations. But when the final nominees are announced on Thursday there may be some changes, despite the fact that there are still some serious omissions and oversights.

Once again Battlestar Galactica didn’t make even the list of ten semi-finalists for top drama, an absurd event given that both Grey’s Anatomy and House (except for the final two episodes) had sub-par seasons. Heroes wasn’t nearly as strong last year as in its first season, but it’s hard not to conclude that sci-fi shows aren’t getting their due respect from the television academy voters.

Another stunner was the absence of both How I Met Your Mother and The Big Bang Theory from the comedy lineup. Both are better written, acted and directed than Two and a Half Men, which continues to get nominations, in my view, more for its ratings clout than its creative might.

Likewise, Ugly Betty lost some luster as well, but still wound up making the semi-final cut.

However, the good news includes the fact that The Wire is among the possible Outstanding Drama Series candidates. Dexter, Friday Night Lights and Lost are all worthy and deserved contenders, as well as Damages. When it’s good, Boston Legal is fantastic. But there are also sectors in almost every episode that range from utterly absurd to simply dumb, and the inconsistency makes it a less worthy show when compared to others that don’t have that creative deviation within each episode.

These are my five choices in the two categories, plus the show that would be the winner if I had a vote.

Outstanding Comedy Series

30 Rock (NBC), Entourage (HBO), Weeds (Showtime), Pushing Daisies (ABC), The Office (NBC). Winner: 30 Rock, though The Big Bang Theory was by far the funniest show on the air this season.

Outstanding Drama Series

Dexter (Showtime), Friday Night Lights (NBC), The Wire (HBO), Lost (ABC), Damages (FX). With such a strong lineup, we give the award by the slimmest of margins to Lost, while also acknowledging that no program better explored social and political issues more skillfully than The Wire. But given the restrictions on language and content they face operating in the network environment, and the often remarkable imagination displayed in the storyline, you’ve got to go with Lost. Maybe someday Battlestar Galactica will gets its due.

New developments

The first try at creating an American version of the outstanding British mystery and detective series Cracker was a dismal failure in 1997-98. Robert Pastorelli labored in the role that Robbie Coltrane made famous, and ABC wisely pulled the plug after 11 episodes. Now more than a decade later, another team will take a crack at putting a domestic spin on the chronicle of chain-smoking, hard-living, out-of-shape but brilliant investigator Eddie “Fitz” Fitzgerald.

The great actor Robert Duvall is one of the executive producers involved in this new version, which will be another TNT original production, according to Zap2it.com. No start or airdate, nor casting information has yet been announced, but at least with Duvall and co-executive producer Robert Carliner (whose last venture was the superb western Broken Trail) viewers know they’ll get a highly professional enterprise.

Very little that’s been publicly released regarding the ABC treatment of yet another top British program Life on Mars has been very good. Thus the news that Emmy-winning actor Michael Imperioli is joining the show comes as one positive development. Imperioli won in 2004 for his work on HBO’s The Sopranos. That may temporarily quell the otherwise rampant fears about quality that have dogged the show since David E. Kelley, the writer and executive producer of the original pilot, walked away from the show.

Josh Appelbaum, Andre Nemec and Scott Rosenberg are now in charge of Life on Mars, which stars Jason O’Mara as Sam Tyler, a contemporary cop who finds himself back in the early ‘70s after a car accident. Imperioli’s character is Ray Carling, a colleague who both resents and distrusts Tyler. The show is among the few new programs debuting in the new season on ABC (locally WKRN-2).