US TV roundup: 'Emmy's so white', and shows worth bingeing in rest of 2021

Succession, Billions, Ozark are some of the American TV series that you must absolutely devour if you haven't already

The much-hallowed Emmy Awards recently turned out to be the butt of ridicule on Twitter as no actor of colour won a gong despite there being a diverse list of nominees.

While many did see Jason Sudeikis (Ted Lasso), Gillian Anderson (The Crown) sailing through, experts were still expecting a couple of actors to break through, such as any of the actors from Hamilton and Bridgerton star Rege-Jean Page.

The Emmy Awards got slammed on Twitter for being unable to make a bigger statement beyond its historic and diverse nomination fields, with all major acting trophies going to white actors.

Actors of colour that could have been fitting winners included Billy Porter, Mj Rodriguez (both for The Pose), the late Michael K. Williams (Lovecraft Country), Kenan Thompson and Bowen Yang (Saturday Night Live).

Actor Poorna Jagannathan didn't mince any words on Twitter, "Can't we just build another award ceremony? Why're we fixing something that's a car wreck? Is it weird to wonder why none of the white winners acknowledged the elephant in the room?"

On the bright side, Michaela Coel, nominated for four Emmys, won the writing for a limited series category for I May Destroy You, the third time a Black creative has won the category and first for a Black woman. One would say she deserved an award even more so for taking forward the conversation on sexual consent and drug abuse. The show, available on Hotstar, is about a novelist in London who goes through life-changing events in quick succession before realising she has been raped without her knowing about the identity of her abuser. It's alternately hilarious, moving and disturbing and sometimes all these emotions rolled into one scene.

With Covid dealing a body blow to the moving arts, one wonders how much more depleted the pipeline would be in 2022. We already missed a season of the fabulously deranged Succession in 2020, which, mercifully, is returning this year. From the trailer one gets the feeling that it will be yet another sensationally good season with the dysfunctional Roy family returning to make us mortals loathe them some more. At this point of time, one can only pine for the cognitive pyrotechnics of Ozark, whose fourth and final season is something Netflix owes us couch potatoes.

It's going to be the season of heartbreak when the final season of Insecure airs, a show that rightfully took its creator Issa Rae to the orbit of fame. This series gained its cult following due to its lead characters' messed up love lives while hustling hard in the ever-changing landscape of Los Angeles. Speaking of returning to the small screen, the joyously profane Billions, available on Hotstar, has returned for the second half of its season five. This show, which celebrates greed on Wall Street, is about an US attorney (played with a quirky majesty by Paul Giamatti) who makes it his lifetime goal to expose the sordid deeds of a hedge fund manager (a quintessentially savvy Damian Lewis).

The latest season involves the hedge fund manager trying to get a bank licence from the tight-fisted US Fed. Because the show is very au courant, we see the latest series being all about cannabis money, bitcoin mining. If you have a demat account, there's no way you can miss out on this inventively depraved show.

For those who prefer something more personal, Work In Progress is an underrated gem of a show, which is available on Hotstar. The show is about a 45-year-old lesbian (Abby McEnany) in modern-day Chicago who lives with depression and obsessive-compulsive disorder. Her crisis-ridden life takes a turn when her relationship with a 22-year-old trans man hits a roadblock. The show gets beautifully blah when it has to and also takes fascinating detours to show the viewer the queer experience in 21st century America. Latest season also touches upon coronavirus and how Abby lives through it.

Work In Progress might not win an Emmy and maybe that's for the better because one wouldn't want to expose such an intensely gorgeous show to the wider world.