HBO should have entered True Detective as a Best Miniseries
By Josh Hill
True Detective walked away with one major Emmy award this year and it wasn’t even that major of an award in the eyes of many television fans.
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That’s not to discount the Best Director for a Drama Series Emmy, because it’s something we all will never win, but it’s not one of the popular awards and that’s where True Detective was shut out — badly.
Maggie Furlong, in a great piece breaking down the reasons True Detective lost the Emmy awards, notes that the series should have just stuck to being a miniseries and not a drama.
"HBO made the choice to submit True Detective in the Drama Series category, even though the show has been considered an anthology series — with a new cast and new story each season, much like FX’s Fargo and American Horror Story — from the start. In the Miniseries or Movie category, True Detective stood a pretty good chance of scoring a win or two, but putting it up against the major drama players of the last decade was definitely an over-estimation, no matter how critically loved the first season was."
Had True Detective been in the Best Miniseries or TV Movie category it likely would have cleaned up. McConaughey would have won Best Actor, the series would have more than likely won Best miniseries and there would be a lot more Emmys to show for than what ended up being the case.
That’s all on HBO, as Furlong points out, and it’s something the series should reconsider when it submits season two for consideration next time they can.