Cable Scores Big with Emmy Noms

LOS ANGELES, July 17: It
has been another standout year for cable programs, as AMC, FX and Showtime all
make their debut in the best series category for the 60th Primetime Emmy
Awards, with HBO again bagging the most nominations among all the networks with
85.

AMC’s period drama Mad
Men, which notched up 16 nominations, will go head to head
with the FX legal thriller Damages
and Showtime’s Dexter, with
ABC’s Lost and Boston Legal and FOX’s House all also vying for the win. The 2007 win went to The
Sopranos for its final season.

Boston Legal’s James Spader won out last year on the
performance side, and will look to repeat that success against fellow nominees Bryan Cranston of Breaking Bad, Dexter’s Michael
C. Hall, Hugh Laurie of House, Gabriel
Byrne for In Treatment and Mad Men’s Jon Hamm. Females looking for top honors are last year’s
winner Sally Field for Brothers & Sisters, Kyra Sedgwick for The Closer, Saving Grace’s
Holly Hunter, Mariska Hargitay for Law & Order: SVU and Glenn Close for Damages. Up for their supporting roles in the drama genre are Damages’ Ted Danson and Zeljko Ivanek, William Shatner for Boston
Legal, Lost’s Michael Emerson and John Slattery for Mad Men. Females being recognized for their supporting roles are In
Treatment’s Dianne Wiest, Rachel Griffiths
of Brothers & Sisters, Boston
Legal’s Candice Bergen and co-stars
Chandra Wilson and Sandra Oh, who are both up for their work on Grey’s
Anatomy.

NBC’s 30 Rock will defend its title in the comedy category
against 2006 winner The Office,
HBO’s Entourage and Curb
Your Enthusiasm and CBS’s Two
and a Half Men.

Monk’s Tony Shalhoub, Pushing Daisies’ Lee Pace, Steve Carell of The
Office, 30 Rock’s Alec Baldwin and Charlie Sheen of Two and a Half Men are looking to take the top honors for lead comedic
actor. In another nod for 30 Rock,
Tina Fey is nominated in the lead comedic actress category, along with Mary-Louise Parker of Weeds, Christina Applegate for Samantha Who?, Julia Louis-Dreyfus for The New Adventures of Old
Christine and Ugly Betty’s America Ferrera, who won out last year. Entourage co-stars Jeremy Piven and Kevin Dillon are both up for
supporting nods, along with How I Met Your Mother’s Neil Patrick Harris, Rainn Wilson of The Office and Two
and a Half Men’s Jon Cryer. Also for Two
and a Half Men, Holland Taylor is
nominated for her female supporting role, in the category with Pushing
Daisies’ Kristin Chenoweth, Jean Smart for
Samantha Who?, Ugly Betty’s Vanessa Williams and Amy Poehler, picking up a
nomination for Saturday Night Live.

Garnering the
most nominations overall is HBO’s John Adams with 23 in total, including best
mini-series and best lead actor nods for Paul Giamatti and Laura Linney. The
show will go up against A&E’s The Andromeda Strain, Cranford (Masterpiece Theatre) on PBS and SCI FI’s Tin Man for the top spot.

Meanwhile,
Giamatti is in competition with Ralph Fiennes of Bernard and Doris, Ricky Gervais for Extras: The
Extra Special Series Finale and Kevin Spacey and Tom Wilkinson of Recount, while Linney looks for the win over
Dame Judi Dench for Cranford, Catherine Keener for An American Crime, Susan Sarandon for Bernard and
Doris and Phylicia
Rashad, up for her role in A Raisin in the Sun. John Adams and Recount split the vote in the supporting actor
category, with David Morse, Stephen Dillane and Tom Wilkinson up for John
Adams and Denis Leary
and Bob Balaban representing Recount, which garnered a total of 11 nominations. Recount earned another nod in the supporting
actress group, with Laura Dern taking on Audra McDonald of A Raisin in the
Sun, Alfre Woodard for
Pictures of Hollis Woods, Ashley Jensen for Extras: The Extra Special Series Finale and Cranford’s Eileen Atkins.

Recognized as
standout made-for-TV movies are Lifetime’s The Memory Keeper’s Daughter and ABC’s A Raisin in the Sun, along with HBO’s Bernard and Doris, which received a total of 10 nods, Recount
and Extras: The
Extra Special Series Finale.

Shifting the
focus to reality programming, up for best competition series is last year’s
winner, The Amazing Race, along with American Idol, Dancing with the Stars and Bravo’s Project Runway and Top Chef. On the non-competition side of the
genre, Intervention and
Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List are nominated alongside Antique Roadshow, Dirty Jobs and Extreme Makeover: Home Edition.

The 60th
annual Primetime Emmy Awards will be broadcast on ABC on September 21.

—By
Kristin Brzoznowski