Join The National's film and TV writer Chris Newbould (that's me) here from 4am UAE for live updates from this year's Emmy Awards. My early predictions? Game of Thrones and Breaking Bad might do quite well. You heard it here first.
By way of a preamble, I can't help noticing a pattern developing linking major entertainment industry award ceremonies and relatively important football games involving Manchester City. You may recall that last time I was on overnight duty blogging March's 86th Academy Awards ceremony, earlier in the evening City had succesfully vanquished Sunderland 3-1 in the League Cup final. Tonight, the mighty Blues face Liverpool. It's only the second game of the season, so not quite such a crucial affair, but an early meeting between last season's champions and runners up should give an interesting early pointer as to where this season's trophy is headed.
I technically could live blog that too since I'm here, but I wouldn't want to set a precedent of live blogging late English Premier League kick offs that the sports desk might feel pressured to follow. To be honest, judging by Richard Keyes' current 10-minute commentary on City's fetching new blue shorts, it would probably work better on All Dressed Up than either here or on the sports pages.
The World's End is also currently premiering on OSN Movies. Quite a night on telly, as befits an auspiscious occasion such as this.
4AM: Good morning internet. This show is on the road already, Seth Meyers has already taken the stage, and it's a tough crowd as his gag about the Emmy's being moved to a Monday night to avoid clashing with Sunday Night Football bombs - it's only his second gag. Cheer up, Seth. It can only get better. Talking of football - another 3-1 win for City. Coincidence? Or are the illuminati involved? This is the internet after all.
Incidentally, if you feel the urge to join in tonight, feel free to tweet me on @ChrisNewbould, or email cnewbould@thenational.ae. It can get lonely out here.
Blimey - they're not hanging about. Ty Burrell takes Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy for Modern Family, Louis CK takes Outstanding Comedy Writer for Louie, and Allisson Janney takes Supporting Comedy Actress for Mom - all while I'm still trying to get the file I need to update to open. Fast work!
4.30: The Comedy Directing award is preceded by a slightly cringeworthy montage of actors telling us the best advice the nominated directors have given them. It's supposed to be funny, but it's a bit luvvy to be honest. Anyway, mercifully that's over and Gail Mancuso wins the award for Modern Family. She started out as an usher on a talk show, don't you know?
4.45: Seth Mcfarlane's in a segment on the streets of New York finding out how excited folks on the East Coast are about the Emmys. Variable, seems to be the key word. I've got to say, the level of light relief provided by this year's host is somewhat disappointing.
4.50am: Jim Parsons swoops in to take Best Lead Comedy Actor for Big Bang Theory.
4.55: Jimmy Fallon looks strangely nervous. Maybe that bombed football gag has him on edge? Conversely, his gags are going down much better than Meyers.' Anyway, he's presenting Lead Comedy Actress and it's Julia Louis Dreyfus for Veep. She's thanking a lot of people, but at least Armando Ianucci is among them. Comedy genius.
5am: Something called The Last Race just won Best Reality TV Show. It means nothing to me. They could do with injecting a bit of race spirit to their walk to the stage - there are about 40 of them.
5.10am I might be being unduly harsh, but Seth Meyers really isn't having his best night. We just sat through a staged Q+A session with the audience that was rather like pulling teeth. It was reminiscent of a bunch of drama students doing an 'improvised' comedy show for charity, probably in the smallest venue in their Student Union and with around 40% of tickets sold. Am I being cruel? 5.20am You may have noticed that due to a technical hitch, the original blog wasn't updating. This is, of course, perfectly normal and there's no reason to adjust your computer. You'll hopefully now find that everything is running like clockwork on this one. In the course of making this one, I seemed to miss a huge clutch of aards for miniseries, so to recap - Writing: Steven Moffatt for Sherlock; Lead Actress: Kathy Bates for American Horror Story (she'll always be Misery for me); Lead Actor: Martin Freeman for Sherlock. He's not there so Stephen Colbert rather cheekily claims the award for himself; Directing: Colin Bucksey for Fargo. That's a three out of four sweep for Brits right there. Only Kathy Bates flying the Stars and Stripes in the field of things that are like a series but a bit different and more mini. Go Team GB. Ricky Gervais was clearly robbed too.
5.25: And Benedict Cumberbatch takes Best Lead Actor in a Miniseries for Sherlock. He's not there either. Probably having a cup of tea and a celebratory plate of Fish 'n' Chips with Martin Freeman or something. Britain's manufacturing industry may be a global source of mirth these days, but when it comes to churning out bite-sized chunks of televisual entertainment there's no stopping us. And Downton Abbey hasn't even won anything yet.
5.30am: Jessica Lange wraps up (I think) the miniseries awards taking Best Lead Actress, and Weird Al Yankovich comes on to do a turn in anticipation of the theme tune award. He's looking pretty good for 54. I'm sure he looked about 50 when I used to think Eat It was the funniest thing ever as a kid. He may actually look younger now. Luscious locks. The song was a bit rubbish though.
5.35am I was wrong about wrapping the miniseries. There's at least another one to go, and it's Fargo for Outstanding Miniseries. Meyer's intro to Yankovitch, all about the importance of theme tunes, was there purely to throw me off track it seems. He's probably miffed that I've been querying the quality of his gags.
5.40: Outstanding Television Movie goes to The Normal Heart. I studied the play at uni, trivia fans. One of my tutors set up the Manchester branch of Act Up, so it was bit of a personal mission for him. If you're reading, Professor Paul Heritage, I guess you'll be quite pleased with that. How's things? It's been a while. 5.45: Ricky Gervais is up to present the Variety Special Writing Award, so at least we might get some decent gags. Oh, and he said a rude word. Naughty Ricky. Sarah Silverman takes the award for We Are Miracles. This is her sixth Emmy, apparently. Her first one was for music. What a multi-talented lady, in a very big green dress.
5.48 These awards seem a lot slicker than The Oscars. They seem to have a time limit on acceptance speeches, and the EXTREMELY regular ad breaks mean that, even with some technical issues earlier in the evening (evening? Who am I trying to kid?), you can just about keep on top of blogging even whe you're playing catch up. I must pass my regards onto the producers.
5.55 And so to Directing on a Variety Special, which goes to Glenn Weiss for this year's Tony Awards, who appears to be currently in the process of directing the Emmy Awards. I'm a bit unconvinced by these variety awards. They seem a touch self serving. This one looks a bit more hopeful - the likes of John Stewart and Saturday Night Live are up for Best Variety Series, but The Colbert Report takes it, and Colbert rather magnanimously thanks John Stewart - Colbert was, of course, a correspondent on Stewart's show before he got his own spin off and ruthlessly snatched the Emmy from under his former mentor's nose.
6.04 Actually, going back to those ad breaks, since we're on another one, I should congratulate OSN on seemingly having a sufficient rosta of advertisers for me not to want to kill anyone yet. I seem to recall that during the Oscars on a different channel, there were only two ads that replayed every 10-15 minutes - one was something to do with Hardees (and as I seem to remember promising at the time, I have never eaten in one since), and the other involved Natalie Portman and some perfume or another. If I was going to single anyone out, I'd say Atlantis The Palm and Qatar Airways are beginning to get close to "too much now" territory.
6.12 It was only a matter of time before one of Breaking Bad's 18 nomination's broke good, and the first one is Aaran Paul for Supporting Actor. Don't be surprised to see another one before the night's over.
6.14 Time for an in memorial montage of this year's departed thesps such as Casey Kasem, Philip Seymour Hoffman, Shirley Temple, Harold Ramis, James Garner and of course, Robin Williams. It's a massive list when it's put together in montage format over a heart rending cover of Smile by a lady who didn't seem to be introduced, and Williams is now getting his own personal tribute from Billy Crystal too.
6.28 Odd how Williams' best-known TV role, in Mork and Mindy surely, was rather glossed over in the montage of clips during his tribute, but anyway on with the show. Cary Joji Fukanaga (that was one for a Google spell check) takes Best Director in a Drama for True Detective. He gets both a "this is awesome" and a "Word up bros" into his acceptance speech, which is a nice break from the air kissing. Then Breaking Bad's Anna Gunn takes Supporting Actress in a Drama, and reverts to the more traditional roll call of gratitude to friends, family, co-stars and crew. Nice to mix it up a bit there.
6.36 Twitter is not happy at all with the hilarious addition of Colombian model Sophia Vergara on a rotating platform to make the ubiquitous dull corporate speech by the Emmys' CEO more interesting. Sexist much? Check #Emmys at your peril right now... 6.40 Moira Walley Beckett takes Outstanding Writing for a Drama for, yup, Breaking Bad, then Julianna Marguiles swoops in, bat-like in black, to pick up lead actress in a drama series for The Good Wife. More ads, but coming up we get to find out if True Detective's Matthew Mconaughey can become the first actor to ever pick up the best actor Oscar (for Dallas Buyers' Club) and Emmy in the same year. If he does, I hope his acceptance speech is less irritating than his Oscars one.
6.50 Julia Roberts is presenting Outstanding Actor in a Drama Series, and that dress is shocking. She looks like a little girl that's been rooting through her mum's wardrobe and found the most garish 70s throwback in there. Anyway, Bryan Cranston deservedly adds to Breaking Bad's growing collection, and we're spared another McConaughey acceptance speech. Meanwhile, Modern family takes Outstanding Comedy. Well, it's been a great year for drama. We shouldn't get too greedy.
7.00 And with a final flourish, Breaking Bad picks up the award for Outstanding Drama, and it's all over. In summary - a good night for Breaking Bad, as predicted (was it six? I'll count later), Game of Thrones will be going home disappointe despite its massive 19 nominations, the UK is the don when it comes to the miniseries genre, and either there's a severe lack of decent comedy coming out at the moment, or Modern Family is a modern classic that I have so far failed to grasp the subtle nuance of.
Any thoughts on this year's winners? Get in touch! I'm off for a power nap before anyone gets in the office and asks me to do anything else.
