Michael C. Hall as Dexter by Randy Tepper/Showtime
Emmys, schmemmys. When it comes to rewarding the very best of TV (and radio), I tend to look at the annual announcement of the prestigious Peabody Awards as my guidepost. Administered through the University of Georgia, the Peabodys is hardly a stuffy institution. This year’s eclectic list of honorees, released earlier today, ranges from terrific critical breakthroughs like NBC’s 30 Rock and AMC’s Mad Men to such deliciously offbeat choices as Showtime’s darkly delicious Dexter and Bravo’s stylish Project Runway, the first reality show ever to make the cut. (For a full list of this year’s and past years’ winners, go here.)
I have come to know Peabody director Horace Newcomb through our joint participation on many AFI Awards jury panels, and he’s as serious, and seriously open-minded, about quality in both news and entertainment programming as it gets. This year’s Peabody Board chose from more than 1,000 entries to select this year’s 35 winners, which range in tone from Comedy Central’s rollicking The Colbert Report to Discovery Channel’s awe-inspiring Planet Earth to PBS Frontline’s unsparing investigative report Cheney’s Law.
I would love to think that, when it comes to shows like Mad Men and Dexter, the Peabody accolade will help put these shows squarely on the Emmy radar. I doubt Mad Men will need the push — it has been well represented at all of the major awards fests this year, and is just the sort of sexy, smart and glamorous show Emmy voters swoon over — but Dexter, especially in its riveting and surprising second season, deserves for the Academy to look beyond its surface creepiness and champion it for the rich and entertaining psychological thriller that it is.
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