Thursday, September 21, 2017

AFT Awards: Best Writing for a Drama Series

This is the fourteenth category of the 11th Annual AFT Television Awards, my personal choices for the best in television during the 2016-2017 season. Finalists and semi-finalists are included to recognize more of the impressive work done on television today. Nominees are pictured in the order I’ve ranked them.

Best Writing for a Drama Series



Last year’s nominees: The Winds of Winter (Game of Thrones), AKA Ladies Night (Jessica Jones), eps1.0_hellofriend.mov (Mr. Robot), Descensos (Narcos), The Same Boat (The Walking Dead)

Emmy nominees: The Americans (The Soviet Division), Better Call Saul (Chicanery), The Crown (Assassins), The Handmaid’s Tale (Offred), Stranger Things (Chapter One: The Vanishing of Will Byers), Westworld (The Bicameral Mind)

Semi-finalists: Episode 8 (The Affair), Stuff to Steal, People to Kill (Dark Matter)

Finalists: Of Mice and Men (Goliath), Faithful (The Handmaid's Tale), The Bicameral Mind (Westworld), Thief (12 Monkeys), Chicanery (Better Call Saul)

The nominees:

Offred (The Handmaid's Tale)
Pilot (Sneaky Pete)
Chapter 1 (Legion)
What If… (Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.)

Three of this year’s pilots were completely different but equally appealing: a dark vision of an oppressive contemporary society, a lighter tale of a creative con man, and an extremely complex, mesmerizing mix of mental illness and science fiction. ABC’s long-running action series got a much-needed and superb reboot with the immersion into a new universe that could have been.

The winner:

Trompe L'Oeil (Westworld) demonstrated, more than anything, the idea that its writers had a grand plan for their show and its layered worlds, culminating in a twist that many fans may have seen coming but was nonetheless extraordinary.

Next up: Best Directing in a Comedy Series

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