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NBC’s
Heroes was this season’s breakthrough hit. But can
it break the Emmys’ science-fiction hex? (The hit series
is being brought to RPN by Solar Entertainment.—Ed.)
The
network’s studio arm naturally wants a clutch of
nominations for writer-producer Tim Kring’s series about
a group of ordinary people who discover they have
superpowers. In a bid to secure key nominations, NBC is
blanketing trade publications with ads for the show,
sending out a DVD mailer to all 12,000 TV academy
members and also offering a free iTunes download of the
season finale, just as it did last year for the comedy
The Office.
Yet
actually wangling a statuette in the best drama category
may prove a lot tougher than saving the show’s
self-healing cheerleader (Hayden Panettiere). TV academy
voters often snub the sci-fi and fantasy genres, which
they appear to believe are less deserving of
institutional recognition than more realistic fare.
Case in
point: Fox’s hit The X-Files was nominated four
times as best drama but always lost out to shows such as
ER and Law & Order. Other Emmy also-rans
include the hits Star Trek: The Next Generation
(which lost out to Picket Fences in 1994),
Quantum Leap (bested by Northern Exposure and
L.A. Law), the original Star Trek (the
1968 Emmy instead went to
Mission: Impossible)
and The Twilight Zone (losing out to Hallmark
Hall of Fame in 1961). A number of other highly
regarded sci-fi series, including Sci Fi Channel’s
critically acclaimed Battlestar Galactica, have
never even been nominated as best drama.
That may
help explain why NBC executives are playing down
Heroes’ comic-book appeal, emphasizing instead its
more traditional dramatic elements.
“I know
intellectually [the series] lives in the sci-fi area,”
said Laura Lancaster, senior vice president at NBC
Universal Television Studio, which makes Heroes.
“But for me, it goes back to the characters.”
Lancaster
cited as an example the show’s focus on the tense
relationship between Nathan and Peter (Adrian Pasdar and
Milo Ventimiglia), brothers who just happen to have
extraordinary powers.
“It’s
beyond being a genre show,”
Lancaster
said.
Maybe
so. But industry prejudice runs fairly deep against
anything that even smacks of the genre. Although
science-fiction has proved its popularity with viewers
over the years, executives tend to view the format as a
purely escapist haven for geeks, filled with props like
phasers and other goofy, futuristic paraphernalia.
Therefore those shows are not as “serious” as other
types of dramatic series.
Brad
Adgate, senior vice president at
New York
ad firm Horizon Media, said that Emmy voters might be
turned off by the “campiness” associated with some
sci-fi efforts, as well as “the perception of an
over-reliance on special effects instead of dialogue.”
Indeed, a look at Emmy drama winners in recent years
(e.g., The West Wing and The Sopranos)
shows how voters tend to prize well-wrought scripts over
special effects.
Still,
he added, “Heroes could get a nomination” because
of its high ratings and its perceived
“uniqueness”—there’s nothing else like it on the
schedule.
That’s
what NBC is banking on. Mired in fourth place in the
ratings, the network is doubling down on its new hit,
adding a spinoff for a total of 30 Heroes-themed
episodes next season. A DVD of the first season will
land at the end of the summer. And an Emmy for best
drama could go a long way in hooking new viewers.
“I
absolutely feel like there’s room for growth,” Lancaster
said of the Heroes audience. |
