Presumed Innocent Emmy Chances: What Happened?

It has been exactly 10 years since one television network scored the Emmy equivalent of the Triple Crown: wins for Best Comedy Series, Best Drama Series, and Best Limited Series in the same year. Back in 2015, HBO achieved that distinction when Veep Season 4, Game of Thrones Season and Olive Kitteridge scored each of those respective statuettes.

Flash-forward a decade and Apple TV+ — which likes to consider itself the “new HBO” — had a path to repeating that achievement. The streaming service already has Best Comedy and Best Drama wins in the offing with the one-two punch of The Studio and Severance. And with Presumed InnocentApple has the kind of A-list marquee limited series with big stars (including Jake Gyllenhaal) and big ratings that probably would have propelled HBO to a category win back in the day.

Somewhere along the road to Emmy night, though, Presumed Innocent lost traction as The Penguin and Adolescence took over the limited-series conversation. Where exactly that point happened is one of the questions that the Awards Magnet team explored on this week’s episode. Was Presumed Innocent simply too last summer for voters given that it wrapped its run in July 2024? Was it too much of a standard legal eagle drama when compared to its genre-defying rivals? Or maybe it’s just good old-fashioned competition.

Besides casting their verdict on the case of Presumed Innocentthe Awards Magnet trio also explore another intriguing limited series question: With the winners seemingly so clear in each category, which nominees are finishing in the No. 2 spot? And could any of those apparent also-rans manifest an upset victory? After all, there’s historically been a good reason why the Emmys aren’t over until Michelle Williams sings.

Listen or watch the latest episode of Awards Magnet and be sure to email your questions, comments and voicemails to awardsmagnet@goldderby.com for future mailbag episodes.