Medieval fantasy series Game of Thrones, filmed in Northern Ireland, led nominations on Thursday for the television Emmy awards.
The series, which features Irish actors including Aidan Gillen, Jack Gleeson, Liam Cunningham and Michelle Fairley, got 22 nominations for the American awards, including for best drama series.
It will compete in the category with last year's Emmy winner, The Handmaid's Tale, which also won nominations for actresses Elisabeth Moss, Alexis Bledel, Samira Wiley, Ann Dowd and Yvonne Strahovski.
Other best drama contenders include Stranger Things, The Crown, NBC's family drama This Is Us, Cold War spy series The Americans on FX and Westworld."
Game of Thrones, a HBO series, is based on a series of books by George R.R Martin, with "Westeros" a key location. Almost all of the outdoor scenes that take place in Westeros were filmed in Northern Ireland, including Downpatrick and Ballymoney, and some interior scenes were filmed in Titanic Studios in Belfast.
The series attracted the largest number of nominations, followed by NBC sketch show Saturday Night Live and HBO's sci-fi series Westworld with 21 nominations each, and Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale with 20.
Just five years after the launch of its first original series, “House of Cards,” Netflix ended HBO’s 17-year streak as the most Emmy-nominated network.
Netflix gathered 112 nominations for shows including Stranger Things, The Crown and new Western drama Godless.
HBO had 108 nominations and NBC shows earned 78.
The Emmy awards will be handed out at a ceremony in Los Angeles on September 17th, hosted by Saturday Night Live cast members Michael Che and Colin Jost.
In the comedy categories, hip-hop themed FX show Atlanta will compete against Amazon's The Marvelous Mrs Maisel, ABC's female wrestling show GLOW, Curb Your Enthusiasm", Barry, Silicon Valley and Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt.
Perennial Emmy favorite comedy “Veep” is out of this year’s race because of a production delay caused by the cancer treatment of star Julia Louis-Dreyfus, who has won best comedy actress six years in a row. – Reuters
