Adolescence and The Studio tipped to win big at Emmy Awards

LOS ANGELES – Searing teen murder saga Adolescence and Hollywood satire The Studio are expected to be among the big winners at the Emmy Awards on Sept 14 night (Sept 15, Singapore time).

Meanwhile, Apple TV+’s sci-fi office thriller Severance and HBO medical procedural The Pitt will vie for the highly coveted best drama series prize.

Pundits say that the race, television’s equivalent of the Oscars, is too close to call at the ceremony held at the Peacock Theater in Los Angeles, which kicks off at 5pm.

Arguably 2025’s most-talked-about TV hit, Adolescence is the clear favourite to win best limited series, awarded to shows that end after one season.

Earning a whopping 140 million views in its first three months on Netflix, it follows a 13-year-old schoolboy arrested on suspicion of murdering a female classmate with a knife.

It is “inconceivable to see a way in which Adolescence loses come Emmy night”, wrote John Ross of entertainment magazine Variety. “Cultural zeitgeist trumps all at the Emmys.”

Each of its four episodes is shot in a stunning single take, and together form a timely and tragic examination of the impact of toxic masculinity on young boys.

The show drew rave reviews and countless water-cooler discussions. A limited series win would be the second in a row for dark British Netflix shows, after 2024’s Baby Reindeer.

The best comedy series prize has a similarly prohibitive favourite – Apple TV+’s The Studio. Starring its co-creator Seth Rogen as floundering movie executive Matt Remick, it is both a love letter to Hollywood and a searing send-up of the industry’s many insecurities, hypocrisies and moral failings.

Its 23 nominations are the joint-most ever by a comedy in a single year, and it already won nine statuettes last weekend at the ceremony for the more technical Emmy categories.

In a meta twist, a beloved episode of The Studio takes place during a Hollywood awards show. It has a running gag in which nearly every winner thanks Matt’s underling Sal Saperstein (Ike Barinholtz) rather than the boss himself.

The Sept 14 ceremony’s most intriguing moment seems destined to be the announcement of the best drama series award – typically the final prize of the night.

Severance, a psychological drama set largely in the near-future offices of a shadowy corporation, has the most nominations of any show in 2025 with 27.

The premise is that the “innie” employees of Lumon Industries quite literally leave their outside lives, memories and personalities at the door, thanks to a dystopian new mind-splitting technology.

Starring Adam Scott, its acclaimed first season in 2022 missed out to corporate drama Succession for Emmys glory, but 2025’s sophomore run was the presumed drama front runner.

Then along came The Pitt, a quietly released medical drama that was originally conceived as a spin-off from award-winning medical drama ER (1994 to 2009) and emulates much of that show’s DNA.

All 15 episodes are set consecutively during the same unbearably stressful shift at an inner-city Pittsburgh hospital. Tackling everything from abortion rights to mass shootings, it has become a word-of-mouth sensation.

ER veteran Noah Wyle is tipped to pip Scott for the best drama actor prize for his performance as the emergency room’s haunted leader.

In these divisive political times, the Television Academy, the body which hands out the Emmys, is determined to steer clear of controversy.

“We’re definitely just celebrating television,” ceremony producer Jesse Collins told online news site Deadline on Sept 11. “Nobody’s trying to veer off that course. We want everybody to just have fun for three hours.”

Host Nate Bargatze has even devised a novel way to keep things succinct.

The comedian has pledged to donate US$100,000 (S$128,000) of his own money to the youth organisation Boys & Girls Clubs of America.

The catch? He will deduct US$1,000 for every second that a winner’s acceptance speech exceeds the allotted 45 seconds. AFP