Category Confusion At The Golden Globes

This year’s Golden Globes (the TV portion, anyway) featured a number of surprise winners and left some critics more than a tad miffed.Streaming service Amazon was a the night’s surprise winner, with the modern orchestra comedy Mozart In The Jungle winning for Best Comedy Series and its star, Gael Garcia Bernal winning for Best Actor in a Comedy Series. Those two wins put it ahead of rival Netflix, which went home empty-handed.Part of the controversy around Mozart In The Jungle involved an issue that’s surfaced during the Emmy’s as well: category confusion. Streaming series often straddle the line between comedy and drama and it’s unclear which category they actually belong in. We saw this with Netflix’s Orange Is The New Black which actually switched Emmy categories, moving from Comedy in 2014 to Drama in 2015.Other shows, like HBO’s Girls, and Amazon’s Transparent, also straddle the line between comedy and drama, borrowing from both genres to create something new. Mozart In The Jungle is more of a traditional comedy and that most likely contributed to its victory.That said, it’s probably time for both the Emmys and the Golden Globes to create a separate category for “Dramedy” series that cross over between both. With 409 original series on TV this year, there should be no problem finding candidates to fill that slot.The Fine Art of GatekeepingWhat’s perhaps more notable about the Amazon win, however, is how quickly the streaming networks seem to have gotten the hang of creating award-winning original series. For years, networks defended their position as gatekeepers by claiming that picking hit series was some sort of dark art, with success achieved only after years of study.Seems that’s not really the case and that’s a good thing for the folks at home.Network programmers may argue that streaming and premium services are at an advantage in that they don’t have to worry about advertisers, just subscribers, and thus have the luxury of creating series that appeal to a more sophisticated adult audience. While that advantage too often plays out as naked people having sex on TV whilst briefly flashing their breasts and genitals, it does give the subscription networks an advantage, and not just with 13 year-old boys.That’s also a good thing, as the more people get exposed to quality shows on subscription networks, the more likely they are to demand higher quality on broadcast and cable networks too.  Witness the runaway success of USA Network’s Mr. Robot which won Best Drama and Best Supporting Actor in a Drama (Christian Slater.) Originally conceived as a movie, Mr. Robot exhibited the sorts of plot lines and cinematography usually associated with streaming series. A clever promotional campaign helped to launch the series with the right audience and USA took the right approach to the ratings, fully expecting the show to pick up time-shifted viewers as it went along.While award shows are at one level nothing more than a way for the industry to create more press about itself, they’re often the harbinger of things to come. This year’s show seems to indicate that we’ve got more Golden Age of Television ahead of us.