With its blatantly unfair nomination process and some outstandingly unlikely categories and winners, this year's Emmys were a mess, writes Sean O'Driscoll
This year's mini-fiascos at the Emmys can be blamed on football. The annual TV awards, loved by some as populist, hated by others as camp and irrelevant, hit some absolute low points this year, not counting Barry Manilow's live performance and Emmy win. The audience figures were way down and some of the nominee choices were so rushed, they bordered on the surreal.
Most of the fault lies with this year's host, NBC, who put on the show unusually early this year to avoid a clash with the American Football season. That left the Emmy academy with 23 fewer working days to shift through the mounds of TV footage and pick the winners. The result was a desperate behind-the-scenes struggle to get the nominations in on time.
The biggest winner in this disastrous process was Ellen Burstyn, who spoke 38 words in two film segments totalling 12 seconds and still managed to pull a nomination.
The conclusion was obvious: some academy members had simply flicked down the list, chosen people they liked and sent off the entries. There's no other way to explain why the best reality show award went to Extreme Makeover: Home Edition at the expense of the blood-boilingly provocative documentary series, Bullsh**, which pushes free speech to the very edge while exposing everything from Virgin Mary apparitions to supposed "ghost experts". The home furnishing snoozeathon also saw off the awkward beauty of Kathy Griffith: My Life on the D List, about the fading actress's comedy and plastic surgery-strewn life.
With the nomination process so glaringly unfair, it's not surprising then that the promo for James Woods's new CBS drama series, Shark, doesn't mention his two Emmies, saying only that he won "two Oscar nominations".
Perhaps demonstrating the fickle nature of Hollywood, 14 of the actor nominations at the Emmys went to shows that are no longer on air, each appearing on the nomination list like a ghost from a time that was so-oooo last season.
But, in the end, some good did triumph, even if it had to be a Brit import. The US version of The Office won best comedy for its brave decision to break from the original format, pitting the hopelessly dim boss, Steve Carell, against a middle-class African-American who dryly shares his knowledge of "the street" with his fascinated whitey boss. The series, capping an astounding cinema and TV year for Carell, beat off Charlie Sheen's Two and a Half Men and the groundbreaking but cancelled family series, Arrested Development.
There was disappointment for some in the drama series category when Grey's Anatomy, with a cynical doctor and atheist as its lead character, falling to the political thriller, 24. As a White House drama (this time about a malignant and cunning president), 24 may have picked up votes from The West Wing, which won a consolation Emmy for Alan Alda after almost monopolising the drama section for years.
There were signs too that the US has terrorism fatigue. The mini-series award went to Helen Mirren's historical drama, Elizabeth I, adding to the Brit invasion and beating off the terrorist-as-conflicted-ordinary-guy series thriller, Sleeper Cell. Terror fatigue also hit in the made-for- television movie category with Paul Greengrass's verité 9/11 pic, Flight 93, losing out to the romantic HBO/BBC production, The Girl in the Café, based on a love affair at the 2005 G8 summit.
In one of the most controversial selections of the night, the lead comedy actor award went to Tony Shalhoub as the dry, obsessive-compulsive detective in Monk, beating off Larry David's increasingly well-written self portrait in Curb Your Enthusiasm and Steve Carell in The Office.
Julia Louis-Dreyfus, formerly Elaine in Seinfeld, won the best comedy actress award for the well-received motherhood drama, The New Adventures of Old Christine, which debuted in March and is still struggling to build an audience. Thankfully, the award did not go to former Friends star Lisa Kudrow, who stole the Office formula for her insufferable mockumentary, The Comeback, in which long awkward silences fail to mutate into comedy.
Kiefer Sutherland also won best drama actor for 24, beating off sentimental favourite Peter Krause, whose character died this year on HBO's funeral home drama, Six Feet Under. Many had also tipped Dennis Leary, who turned a nasty 9/11-traumatised New York fireman into a compelling and unsparing portrait of grief.
The best drama actress award went to Mariska Hargitay, for Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, which is pulling in impressive viewing figures despite its grisly plotlines. Some were surprised to see Geena Davis's nomination for Commander In Chief, which is a female version of Martin Sheen's character in The West Wing.
There is also an Emmy for outstanding reality competition programme, which means reality shows based on contrived TV competitions, although it is questionable whether watching actor wannabes jump into a fish-tank, sing in front of Simon Cowell, dance with Z-list "celebrities", try out modelling or survive on a remote island can really be called "outstanding".
This Emmy went to The Amazing Race, thus avoiding a public relations disaster had it gone to the adventure series, Survivor. The show is currently the focus of a huge controversy after dividing up its contesting teams along racial lines - black v white v Latino v Asian - in a bizarre prime-time standoff.
The runners-up also included Simon Cowell's ratings supernova, American Idol, as well as Dancing With the Stars (make that dancing with 1980s B-movie actors) and Project Runway (a high-stakes modelling contest).