EMMYS 2018: GAME OF THRONES MAKES TRIUMPHANT RETURN ON TV'S BIGGEST NIGHT

Netflix and HBO wound up deadlocked with 23 wins each, while The Marvelous Mrs Maisel and The Assassination of Gianni Versace emerged victorious

The cast and crew of Game of Thrones. Photograph: Matt Baron/Rex/Shutterstock

After its absence from last year’s ceremony, Game of Thrones returned to the 70th annual primetime Emmys to take home the night’s biggest award: outstanding drama series. HBO’s sprawling fantasia, whose upcoming eighth season will be its last, won six other awards for its makeup, costumes, music composition and stunt coordination.

The television academy did manage to spread the love in the drama categories, awarding The Americans for its writing and lead actor (Matthew Rhys), The Crown for directing and lead actress (Claire Foy), Peter Dinklage for his supporting work in Game of Thrones, and Thandie Newton for her role in Westworld. “I don’t even believe in God but I’m going to thank her tonight,” said Newton, who plays the robot mutineer Maeve Millay in HBO’s sci-fi hit.

Before anyone began doling out awards, the night was shaping up to be a two-way horse race between HBO and Netflix, with 108 and 112 respective nominations. Accounting for wins at last weekend’s Creative Arts Emmy’s, HBO began the night with a slim 17-16 lead. Netflix, however, briefly took the lead on the shoulders of strong showings for the limited series Godless (for which Jeff Daniels and Merritt Wever won as supporting actor and actress) as well as The Crown, Black Mirror, Seven Seconds and John Mulaney’s standup special, Kid Gorgeous.

Before hosts Colin Jost and Michael Che began proceedings, the show opened with a song and dance courtesy of Kate McKinnon, Kenan Thompson, Kristen Bell, Tituss Burgess, Ricky Martin, Sterling K Brown, John Legend and RuPaul, who joked about Hollywood having “solved” its diversity problem with this year’s crop of nominees.

The night was short on overt Trump barbs but heavy on politics: in their opening monologue, Jost and Che remarked that the first Emmy awards took place all the way back in 1949, “when we all agreed Nazis were bad”. Invoking the cancellation of the ABC sitcom Roseanne after its eponymous star tweeted racist remarks about former Obama administration official Valerie Jarrett, Che quipped: “Roseanne cancelled herself but got picked up by white nationalists.” The duo, who together host SNL’s Weekend Update, recruited Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen to share nuggets of information about Emmys history, a task they were (deliberately) woefully unprepared to meet.

Che also appeared in a prerecorded segment called the Reparation Emmys, in which he gave out belated awards to the stars of black sitcoms overlooked by the Academy such as Marla Gibbs (The Jeffersons), Jimmy Walker (Good Times), and Kadeem Hardison (A Different World).

Colin Jost, Michael Che, Maya Rudolph and Fred Armisen speak onstage during the 70th Emmy Awards. Photograph: Kevin Winter/Getty Images

Eight-time Emmy winner (and 24-time nominee) Betty White made an appearance at the ceremony, reminiscing on a career whose high-water marks, like the sitcoms The Golden Girls and The Mary Tyler Moore Show, have cemented the 96-year-old as a titan of comedy. “It’s incredible that I’m still in this business, and you are putting up with me,” she said to a standing ovation, with SNL stars Kate McKinnon and Alex Baldwin to her left. “All I can say is, it’s such a pleasant business to be in, and how lucky can I be?”

But perhaps the most heartwarming moment of the ceremony came when Glenn Weiss, honored for directing the 2018 Oscars broadcast, used his acceptance speech to recognize his mother, who recently passed away. Weiss then proposed to his girlfriend, Jan Svendsen, who sat in the crowd unassumingly before taking to the stage as Weiss got on one knee. “You wonder why I don’t call you my girlfriend?” he asked as the crowd cheered him on. “It’s because I want to call you my wife.”

Elsewhere, Last Week Tonight with John Oliver won outstanding variety talk series for a third consecutive year. RuPaul’s Drag Race, in its 10th season, was finally recognized by the Academy for outstanding reality competition program, leading to the evening’s most rousing acceptance speech. “Listen, if you can’t love yourself, how in the hell you gonna love somebody else?” said RuPaul, surrounded by castmates and crew. “Can I get an amen in here?”……………

https://www.theguardian.com/tv-and-radio/2018/sep/17/emmys-2018-game-of-thrones-makes-a-triumphant-return-on-tvs-biggest-night