The Emmy Awards are often a difficult time for genre shows. Maybe a sci-fi or fantasy show would pick up a few trophies at the Creative Arts ceremony and get a nomination at a few of the big awards, but it’s often rare for genre shows to dominate. That is, it was rare until Apple TV. The streaming service has always valued genre series, and beginning with Severance in 2022, they have actually started to enter the conversation around the biggest awards of the year.
But this year, Apple moved from a dark horse to a behemoth, taking home 28 awards, more than any other streamer. And for the first time, its major players across drama and comedy were both genre shows: Pluribus for drama and Widow’s Bay for comedy. Widow’s Bay was a surprising success, the first horror-comedy ever to win multiple Emmys. (The only other winning example is What We Do In The Shadows, which only won for its costumes in 2022.) But how did this strange show manage such a feat? The answers are all in the first episode.
