Cosmos, Mr. Dynamite Among Peabody Documentary, Education Winners

ATHENS: Among the documentary, education and public service winners of the 74th annual Peabody Awards were HBO's Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown, as well as Cosmos: A Space Time Odyssey.

Cosmos, an update of Carl Sagan's famous series, won in the education category. Mr. Dynamite: The Rise of James Brown, which is Alex Gibney's biography of "the hardest working man in show business," was among the documentary winners. Also honored as part of the documentary arena were PBS's American Experience: Freedom Summer; Channel 4's Children on the Frontline, about the impact of the civil war in Syria on the country's children; Human Harvest: China's Illegal Organ Trade; and Independent Lens: Brakeless, a cautionary tale about a deadly commuter-train crash in Japan. Further winners included The Newburgh Sting, an HBO doc about four men from Newburgh, New Jersey, who were lured into a would-be terrorist plot by an FBI informant; POV's American Revolutionary: The Evolution of Grace Lee Boggs, which surveys the life of the Chinese-American philosopher/writer/activist; United States of Secrets, a Frontline piece about post-9/11 surveillance in the U.S.; and Soft Vengeance: Albie Sachs and the New South Africa, which chronicles the life and times of a hero of the anti-apartheid movement. Netflix's documentary Virunga, which spotlights the work of park rangers in Congo protecting Africa's mountain gorillas, was also honored.

Winners in the public service arena were BBC World Service's Ebola, as well as Univision's Between Abandonment and Rejection, about the children left at the southern U.S. borders.

Cartoon Network's Adventure Time, an animated mix of sci-fi, fantasy, horror and fairy tale, was honored with a Peabody Award. Doc McStuffins, a Disney Junior series about an African-American physician’s daughter who attends to damaged stuffed animals and other broken toys, was also honored.