Goodbye The Bear and hello Widow’s Bay, as the Emmys crown a new comedy champion

The comedy horror series Widow’s Bay, medical drama The Pitt, the reality competition series The Traitors and the evergreen award-season favourite Hacks swept the 78th annual Emmy Awards.

In a not-quite-a-changing-of-the-guard, the sweep signalled that the television conversation has moved on swiftly – perhaps a sign of the times – from The Bear, Beef and Stranger Things.

The night’s first and most deserving standing ovation went to Jean Smart, who won lead actress in a comedy. Smart has had a decorated dream run on the series, winning the category four times since 2021. (Abbott Elementary’s Quinta Brunson won in 2023.)

Matthew Rhys won best actor twice – lead actor in a comedy (Widow’s Bay) and limited series (The Beast Within Me). Another unsurprising, deserving winner: actor Noah Wyle, lead actor in a drama (The Pitt), with Wyle describing fellow nominee Gary Oldman as “the benchmark I want to hit in my career”.

The highlights? John Mulaney, introducing lead actor in a drama. “Since the creation of television, men have been historically unrepresented,” he quipped. And former Game of Thrones star Emilia Clarke, introducing the actress in a limited series segment in her mother tongue, High Valyrian. (Sally Field won, beating Australian actress Sarah Snook in the same category; it was Fields’ fourth win ever, for Remarkably Bright Creatures.)

And a surprise cameo from Taylor Swift, playing a rookie detective in a pre-taped skit challenging the Law and Order: SVU cast to answer the biggest mystery of the night: would Swift herself show up at the Emmys? (She did not; she was 2000 kilometres away at Arrowhead Stadium in Kansas City, Missouri, watching her husband Travis Kelce play in the Kansas City Chiefs v Denver Broncos match.)

So, who was not on the stage? The Bear was nominated for comedy series and Ayo Edebiri for lead actress in a comedy, but the show’s star Jeremy Allen White didn’t crack the lead actor category this year. It feels like an omission; he won in 2023 and 2024.

Netflix’s Stranger Things was similarly shut out. The super-buzzy streaming drama did get a swag of nominations, winning only one (for visual effects) at the Creative Arts Emmys earlier this month, but the series’ fifth and final season was shut out of the acting and directing categories.

The “in memoriam” segment opened with an acknowledgment of the passing of Schitt’s Creek star Catherine O’Hara. “She may have forgotten me – twice – but we will never forget her,” actor Macaulay Culkin quipped. (O’Hara played his mother in the Home Alone franchise.)

Other notable figures featured in the “in memoriam” included costume designer Bob Mackie, director James Burrows, CNN founder Ted Turner, Grey’s Anatomy and Euphoria star Eric Dane, Nashville star Hayden Panettiere, actor James Van Der Beek and beloved actor-director Rob Reiner.

Breaking down in tears on stage, actress Jamie Lee Curtis described Reiner as “generous and kind to all”. The package was accompanied by Grammy-nominated artist Noah Kahan performing Bridge Over Troubled Water.

The tribute to country singing legend – and film and television star – Dolly Parton was led jointly by singer (and sitcom star) Reba McEntire and actress Sally Field. “If there are truly angels on earth, then we have just lost one,” Field said. McEntire sang one of Parton’s compositions, Appalachian Memories.

In addition to the tears, the telecast came with a double shot of a much kinder emotion – nostalgia. Sarah Michelle Gellar and David Boreanaz – who played Buffy and Angel in Buffy: The Vampire Slayer, also appeared on the Emmy stage, to mark the 30th anniversary of the series.

And three of the stars of Charlie’s Angels – actresses Kate Jackson, Jaclyn Smith and Cheryl Ladd – made an appearance to mark the show’s 50th anniversary which ignited another unsurprising, deserving standing ovation, even if it still does not fully capture the very tangible sentiment in the room for those three iconic women.

The show’s host, actor Mariska Hargitay, acknowledged the 78th year of the awards, and the 100th year of NBC, the network broadcasting them in the US. She was a safe choice as host – widely liked, and connected to a meaningful Hollywood legacy: her mother was the screen icon Jayne Mansfield. And, “Amy [Poehler] and Tina [Fey] said no,” Hargitay quipped.

Between the Creative Arts Emmys, held earlier this month in LA, and the Primetime Emmys, 121 Emmys are given out. (That’s before we get to the news, engineering and daytime Emmys.) The Bob Hope Humanitarian Emmy was given to actor Michael J. Fox, in recognition of “his transformative contributions to Parkinson’s disease research and advocacy”. It is only the sixth time the award has been bestowed since its creation in 2002.

Despite a robust presence in the nominations, Australia walked away with just four Emmys, all won at the Creative Arts ceremony.

Among the nominees: animator Michael Cusack for his animated Smiling Friends, commercial director Kim Gehrig for a Levi jeans TV ad, special effects supervisor Marc Varisco for Monarch: Legacy of Monsters, casting director Jane Norris for All Her Fault and more.

And the winners? Love on the Spectrum film editor Marcus Kjellberg, producers Karina Holden and Cian O’Clery for the show’s win in outstanding unstructured reality program, and a second statue for O’Clery, who won the Emmy for casting.

The loss we felt the deepest? Australian creative director Julio Himede, nominated twice in the production design for a variety special category, for the Apple Music Super Bowl LX Halftime Show Starring Bad Bunny, and for the 68th Annual Grammy Awards. The Halftime Show won for choreography, directing, lighting design, music direction, sound mixing and technical direction. To deny them the production design win felt like an oversight.

Among the other Creative Arts winners: the Netflix film Remarkably Bright Creatures (for television movie), Tucci in Italy (hosted nonfiction series or special), The Traitors host Alan Cumming (host of a reality or reality competition program), the Amazon series Spider-Noir (main title design, sound mixing, special visual effects, stunt co-ordination) and Rob Reiner (guest actor in a television comedy) for his role in The Bear.