2024 Emmy Awards predictions: Can Shogun slay The Bear?

It’s chefs versus samurais at the annual TV awards show. But could Slow Horses run past them both?

The 76th Primetime Emmy Awards are this Sunday (September 15), coming live from the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles. The headlines have been grabbed by Japanese epic Shogun (25 nominations across the Primetime and Primetime Creative awards) and stressful restaurant drama The Bear (23 nominations – the most ever for a comedy in a single year, despite the show not being a comedy). This makes it a very jolly year for Disney-owned production giants FX. 
There’s plenty of British interest, from Slow Horses and Ripley to The Crown and Baby Reindeer – which makes it a shame that we can’t watch it in this country. In the US, it will be shown live on ABC from 8pm EDT. Schitt’s Creek father-and-son duo Eugene and Dan Levy will host, but don’t expect a slew of risque jokes – they have promised a “kinder, gentler approach”.
Who should win: Curb Your Enthusiasm
Fifty-five Emmy nominations; two wins (one for directing, the other for Outstanding Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Comedy Series). No one is going to pretend that the 12th and final series was its finest, but awards ceremonies shouldn’t be afraid of being sentimental and it would be a fitting send-off for Larry David, one of the true greats of modern television. And just imagine his speech.
Who will win: The Bear
Altogether now: “It’s not a comedy!” No, it isn’t, but it won last year and it will win this year, for a second series that often outstripped its outstanding first. Anyone doubting the show’s brilliance – and it does suffer from a tendency to gaze at its very beautiful navel – should be guided towards episode six, Fishes, a feature-length flashback episode set over a chaotic Christmas Eve dinner. It is stunning storytelling.
Who should win: Slow Horses
What a curious list. The Gilded Age? 3 Body Problem? That series of The Crown? Good grief. Never mind, there are some worthy names here, and I am going to fly the flag for Blighty and blow His Majesty’s trumpet for Slow Horses. How quickly it has become everyone’s favourite show, how comfortably we have accepted Gary Oldman as the ornery Jackson Lamb (can you even remember him as George Smiley?). The show pumps out series of such high quality at such a pace that we could take it for granted. We shouldn’t.
Who will win: Shogun
But who could argue with this? Shogun will walk away with a clutch of awards on Sunday night, including this big one. Disney shipwrecked us in 17th-century Japan with Cosmo Jarvis’s English sailor, but, like him, we were soon very happy to be lost in the feudal tussles and sweeping backdrops. Many a TV epic has fallen at the first hurdle; this one could run and run.
Who should win: Ripley
Here’s what TV can do that film can’t. Anthony Minghella’s 1999 film adaptation of Patricia Highsmith’s first Tom Ripley novel was a ripsnorting, sun-dappled breeze, zipping us through the gory story in a couple of hours. Steven Zaillian turned off the colour and turned down the pace, laconically wafting us through eight leisurely but enthralling episodes. Watching Andrew Scott’s seedy conman gradually edge his way to murder was as gripping as it was nauseating.
Who will win: Ripley
The Emmys has a soft spot for populist dramas and maudlin sitcoms, but it tends to view the Limited and Anthology awards as the preserve of high art. Previous recent winners include the superlative Beef, The White Lotus, Watchmen and Chernobyl. As such, I back them to reward Ripley. Could the voters be seduced by a superb fifth series of Fargo, a return-to-form True Detective or that British curio Baby Reindeer? Of course. If Lessons in Chemistry wins, we take to the streets.
Matt Berry – What We Do in the Shadows as Leslie “Laszlo” Cravensworth (FX)
Larry David – Curb Your Enthusiasm as Larry David (HBO)
Steve Martin – Only Murders in the Building as Charles-Haden Savage (Hulu) 
Martin Short – Only Murders in the Building as Oliver Putnam (Hulu)
Jeremy Allen White – The Bear as Carmen “Carmy” Berzatto (FX)
D’Pharaoh Woon-A-Tai – Reservation Dogs as Bear Smallhill (FX)
Who should win: Steve Martin
Ah come on, give him an Emmy. Yes he technically has one – for Outstanding Writing for a Variety Series for The Smothers Brothers Comedy Hour in 1972 – but Martin’s return to form with the effortlessly entertaining Only Murders deserves recognition. With apologies to co-star and co-creator Martin Short, but Martin nudges ahead by virtue of that patter song. “Which of the Pickwick triplets did it…”
Who will win: Jeremy Allen White
Let’s not kid ourselves.
Who should win: Ayo Edebiri
Not entirely sure what’s changed since series one (for which she won Outstanding Supporting Actress at last year’s ceremony), but Edebiri deserves enormous credit for pulling attention onto a compelling female character in the salty, testosterone-heavy world of The Bear. It’s such a complete performance you struggle to imagine her in anything else.
Who will win: Quinta Brunson
The Emmys loves a comedy legacy, especially for female actors (remember Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s six on the bounce for Veep?) and this award will come down to Jean Smart for Hacks (winner 2021, 2022) and Brunson for Abbott Elementary (winner 2023). My money is on the latter.
Who should win: Gary Oldman
Once again I am going to fly the Union flag ahead of the Rising Sun, though with little hope. Oldman, perhaps, will lose out because he’s so good – as Lamb he barely looks like he’s acting. More than any other character of recent years, you know exactly what he smells like. A pungent performance in every sense.
Who will win: Hiroyuki Sanada
And once again, who could argue with this? A look down the previous years suggests this category can throw up some oddities (Rami Malek for Mr Robot, anyone?), so don’t entirely rule out a noseless Walton Goggins or a hunky Idris Elba adding a bit of unexpected sparkle to their mantelpieces. But Sanada is mesmerising as Toranaga, the beating moral heart of Shogun.
Who should win: Anna Sawai
A tipping point performance for an actress who has been on the verge of the bigtime for a few years – Giri/Haji, Pachinko, er… The Fast and the Furious 9. She managed to imbue her Mariko with such depth and such an internal life that poor Cosmo Jarvis looked occasionally wooden opposite her.
Who will win: Maya Erskine
A hunch. Erskine is well-known in America for her comedy roles – especially the critically acclaimed Pen15 – and I suspect the Emmy voters will have been wowed by her transformation into a serious actress (with a nice side order of action hero too). To stop Mr & Mrs Smith becoming the Donald Glover show is quite some achievement.
Who should win: Tom Hollander
Of the three Brits up for this award, I’d give Hollander the nod. Gadd is compelling, but his performance never really managed to escape its stage origins. Scott, as I have said above, is superb as Tom Ripley, and would be a worthy winner. But Hollander became the latest in recent years – following Toby Jones and Philip Seymour Hoffmann – to so wholly inhabit Truman Capote. One of those performances that leaves you talking in their cadence for days afterwards.
Who will win: Jon Hamm
I suspect the Brits won’t win this one, and it will be between Hamm and Bomer. Series five of Fargo was such a brilliant return to form that the actors involved have been swept along with it. Hamm, as Sheriff Roy Tillman, reminded us of his magnetism – and his gift for comedy – as a character of delightfully vile proportions.
Who should win: Naomi Watts
Tom Hollander’s mewling impersonation of Capote could only ever work if anchored by excellent work around him. The “swans” were quite the ensemble – Diane Lane, Chloe Sevigny, Demi Moore, Molly Ringwald, Calista Flockhart – but the best of them was Watts as the bruised and confused Babe Paley.
Who will win: Jodie Foster
The Emmys isn’t shy about rewarding A-listers for stepping onto the small screen and I imagine the board quite like the idea of Foster clutching that golden winged woman holding an atom (arts meets science, since you ask). Again, another performer who could benefit from starring in a show that relocated its puff.
Who should win: Paul Rudd
The Emmys is also partial to a heavyweight guest star and while there’s no shortage of those in Only Murders, Rudd’s was particularly enjoyable (in a relatively ropey third season). His vain, preening luvvie had all the hallmarks of an actor devouring the comedic role he’d been waiting for for years.
Who will win: Ebon Moss-Bachrach
Let’s not kid ourselves.
Who should win: Sheryl Lee Ralph
Abbott Elementary’s matriarch also suffers from the Slow Horses syndrome – Ralph’s performance is such an oven-ready sitcom classic that we can so easily forget the skill that goes into it. The Emmys didn’t, of course, giving her this award in 2022, making her the first black woman to win it in 37 years (and only the second black woman to win it at all, at the time). Her speech was barnstorming – let’s have another.
Who will win: Carol Burnett
The woman wins awards the same way a toddler picks up dirt. She has seven Golden Globes; a win here would take her to the same number of Emmys. America likes to applaud its greats. Palm Royale, though? Forgettable show.
Who should win: Takehiro Hira
The Morning Show? Really? The Emmys’ enduring fascination with that show will always baffle me – even people who love it admit it’s watchable trash. No disrespect to Crudup, Duplass and Hamm, three very fine actors, but I hope they don’t win. Shogun is the one that deserves a slew, including for the wonderful Hira.
Who will win: Jonathan Pryce
I suspect (fear) The Crown will not go home empty-handed, despite its empty-headed final series. Pryce was a rare beacon of class in those final episodes, and the Welshman wrung true pathos out of the Duke of Edinburgh.
Who should win: Lesley Manville
The Morning Show? Really? Never mind… It’s no secret that I am no great admirer of The Crown’s final years, but Manville’s Princess Margaret was a rare bright spot. Her demise was tragic and moving, thanks in no small part to Manville’s excellence. If The Crown must be rewarded, let’s give it to the truly deserving.
Who will win: Elizabeth Debicki
Instead, however, I imagine the award will go to Debicki’s excellent but surface-level impersonation of Diana Frances Spencer.
Who should win: Robert Downey Jr
There is no little irony in the fact that in a drama about Western perceptions of Vietnam, starring a superlative Vietnamese cast, the only Emmy nomination goes to the Western actor who played all the Western roles. Still, Downey Jr was a hoot as a grizzled CIA veteran, a grubby Orientalist, a cheesy congressman and, especially, a hotheaded movie director.
Who will win: Robert Downey Jr
No one would be upset if the late Treat Williams got the nod, while John Hawkes is a class act in everything he does. Bur Mr Iron Man will take this one.
Who should win: Jessica Gunning
Questions over moral grey areas aside, Baby Reindeer gave us some memorable performances. None more so than Gunning, as stalker Martha. It was Annie Wilkes meets Susan Boyle, and it haunts me still.
Who will win: Kali Reis
The former middleweight and light welterweight world boxing champion has transitioned to acting with aplomb, and her performance as the battle-scarred Inupiat cop gave notice of her charisma and talent. 
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