‘Reggie Dinkins,’ ‘Hacks,’ ‘Spider-Noir,’ 2026 Emmy analysis

Here’s a fun brainteaser to throw out at for your next Emmy-themed Trivia Night: What was the last year that all five Best Comedy Series nominees exclusively consisted of broadcast network half-hour sitcoms? Journey back in time with us to 1992 when the quintet of NBC’s Cheers and Seinfeld, ABC’s Home Improvement and CBS’s Brooklyn Bridge and Murphy Brown (the eventual winner) were up for that statuette.

The following year, HBO’s The Larry Sanders Show crashed the party, kickstarting the cable comedy revolution followed by the streaming comedy revolution among Emmy voters. (For the record, 2005 and 2011 were also all-broadcast network years, but the hour-long Desperate Housewives and Glee respectively rounded out those category alongside 21-minute wonder winners Everybody Loves Raymond and Modern Family.)

And if you’re looking for the last year that a broadcast sitcom actually won the Best Comedy Series prize, that would be Modern Family in 2014. Since then the prize has been exclusively owned by the Apples, HBOs and Prime Videos of the TV world, and — as we’ll get to in a minute — that streak is almost certainly going to continue this year. But those who came up in the broadcast game haven’t given up on the medium entirely. One show in particular is going long on a Hail Mary pass for Emmy recognition, and success could either represent a miracle play… or a larger industry turnover.

The dish on Dinkins

“People ask us if this is our Emmy,” The Fall and Rise of Reggie Dinkins executive producer Tina Fey remarked at a recent FYC event at New York’s Paley Center for the NBC mockumentary, holding aloft a golden chain that star Tracy Morgan personally gifted to everyone involved with the show. “No, we want an Emmy.”

Fey’s off-the-cuff quip was typically hilarious, but she and the Reggie Dinkins team have the data to back up that desire for Emmy recognition. When NBC sneak-peeked the series premiere following a Jan. 18 NFL playoff game — one month before the show’s official launch — it scored a ratings touchdown by nabbing 5.8 million viewers, a number that swelled to 13 million samplers in subsequent weeks. That put it on the 2025-26 TV season scoreboard as the most-watched comedy episode across all the Big Four broadcasters. And while subsequent episodes didn’t reach those highs, NBC saw enough potential to invest in a sophomore year.

And here’s another sign of the Reggie Dinkins effect at the Peacock network: Dinkins was notably the only new comedy series that executives announced at the 2025 NBC Upfront. But at this year’s event, NBC unveiled two new comedies for the 2026-27 season, the Jake Johnson-led single-camera series Sunset PI and the multi-camera Newlyweds, starring ’90s sitcom veterans Téa Leoni, Tim Daly, and Jamie Lee Curtis. That may sound like a modest increase, but it’s literally double from where they were a year ago.

Fey, of course, was part of the last gasp for broadcast comedies in the Emmy race as she guided 30 Rock to three consecutive wins between 2007 and 2009. She and Reggie Dinkins co-creators Robert Carlock and Sam Means took a moment during the panel to reminisce about ye olden days, noting that this new show “would crush” the competition if Emmy voters still congregated in theaters to watch all the nominated shows with a crowd.

Once again, Fey’s not wrong. The two episodes that were screened for the FYC crowd — that aforementioned ratings monster of a premiere plus Episode 5, aka “The One With Megan Thee Stallion” — definitely did crush with the crowd, who particularly responded to the performances by Daniel Radcliffe and series MVP Erika Alexander, star of the late, great Fox sitcom Living Single. And since the New York comedy world is small, several people in the crowd had worked with one or more of the folks onstage, which gave the screening the throwback feel of congregating with friends to watch latest episode of an NBC comedy like, say, Friends in your living room or dorm room common area. That’s exactly the vibe Morgan hoped for: “We just wanted to make good old-fashioned TV,” he told the room.

Catching up with the creators and cast members (sans Fey, who made like Jenna Maroney and jormp-jomped outta there) at the post-screening reception, the Dinkins squad reiterated to us how they hope the series recaptures the glory days of network sitcoms, even if Emmy nominations aren’t in offing. Carlock said that he’s mainly rooting for awards recognition for the cast, and two of them have already received some of that shine: Radcliffe and Alexander are both up for the supporting performer statuette at the Gotham TV Awards on June 1.

Six days later, Radcliffe is headed to the Tony Awards as a Best Actor nominee for his Broadway blockbuster Every Brilliant Thing, and he reiterated to us that he doesn’t expect to win a second Tony to add to his Best Featured Actor in a Musical statuette for Merrily We Roll Along. “It’ll be Lithgow or Lane,” the actor said with a smile, referring to the front-running stars of Giant and Death of a Salesman. “Which is a relief! I never understood why people said, ‘It’s an honor just to be nominated,’ but now I do.”

By the way, Radcliffe also says that you shouldn’t expect him to reprise his Emmy-nominated Weird role as “Weird Al” Yankovic in the upcoming jukebox musical that’s winding its way towards Broadway. “I don’t think I have the vocal range to do that onstage,” he admitted. But he’s thrilled to see which actor gets to be white and nerdy in his stead.

When it comes to the Emmy odds, Reggie Dinkins still has some serious yardage to gain. Among the cast, Radcliffe is best positioned so far, registering at No. 11 on our experts only leaderboard for Best Comedy Supporting Actor. Alexander is close behind at No. 12 in Best Comedy Supporting Actress, while Morgan stands at No. 14 among Best Comedy Actor contenders. Meanwhile, the show has officially cracked the Top 10 for Best Comedy Series in a tie with HBO’s Rooster, but still has to climb into an eight-title field dominated by streaming and cable series with Abbott Elementary as the lone broadcast comedy. Stay tuned to see if Reggie Dinkins completes its play and joins the party.

Comedy Series

Only Murders in the Building

Margo’s Got Money Troubles

Jury Duty Presents: Company Retreat

10.

11.

Expert Hack-ers

Even as Reggie Dinkins jostles for a spot in the final eight nominees, the reality is that all of the shows are really competing for second place behind the fifth and final season of HBO’s Hacks. The Jean Smart-led comedy has run a pristine farewell tour that’s been big on laughs and tears, and short on any flubs. The closest they came to the latter was Smart’s admission way back when the show premiered in April that she initially had mixed feelings about the series finale. “I was not sure I was happy about it,” the actress said then.

Ever the pro, Smart quickly followed that confession up with confirmation that she’s still a team player. “I said: ‘Hey, I trust you guys; I always have. It always turns out great,'” she remembered of her conversation with Hacks creators Lucia Aniello, Paul W. Downs, and Jen Statsky. “And it did. Now, I think it’s kind of perfect.”

Speaking of perfect, Smart is currently tracking for a perfect record of five Best Comedy Actress statuettes for five seasons of Hacks. Her closest competitor on the leaderboards is The Comeback‘s Lisa Kudrow, who is also bidding farewell to a character she’s been playing for years, one-time sitcom superstar Valerie Cherish. And Smart’s Hacks co-star Hannah Einbinder is favored to repeat in Best Comedy Supporting Actress as well as part of the wave of love for the final season.

The odds are also in Hacks‘ favor for a second Best Comedy Series win. The show has been nominated for each of its five seasons, with Season 3 breaking through at the 2024 Emmys. Having the final season narrative can sometimes provide some extra oomph to get a comedy into the winners’ circle — just look at Schitt’s Creek in 2020 and Fleabag in 2019. On the other hand, that Hot Priest supremacy meant that Veep‘s final season had to lose, and previous winners like the aforementioned 30 Rock couldn’t get a farewell Emmy in its last year. But we have a feeling that Hacks can hack it.

Comedy Actress

Elle Fanning

Margo’s Got Money Troubles

Quinta Brunson

Abbott Elementary

Kristen Bell

Nobody Wants This

Selena Gomez

Only Murders in the Building

10.

Laura Linney

American Classic

Eight-legged freaks and geeks

You’d better smile when you’re talking to the Spider, buster. Prime Video chose to swing in at the tail end of Emmy eligibility season with Spider-Noir, a live-action superhero serial starring Nicolas Cage as a noir-ish version of Spider-Man previously depicted in the pages of Marvel Comics and on the big screen in the Oscar-winning Spider-Verse animated movies. (Cage also provides the voice of the cinematic Spider-Noir, but that character is different from the one he plays on the series.)

In another late-season move, the streamer chose to submit Spider-Noir as a comedy — not a drama or limited series — for Emmy consideration. That may sound like an odd choice until you actually watch the show and recognize the comic method in Cage’s delightful madness. Spider-Man has always been your friendly neighborhood wisecracker in addition to your friendly neighborhood wall-crawler, and the actor gets plenty of hilarious mileage out of playing an older and not necessarily wiser vigilante who would rather knock back shots than fight supervillains.

Speaking with Gold Derby, Spider-Noir showrunner Oren Uziel acknowledged that the series may not seem like your typical comedy, but noted that it’s tough to categorize anyway. “These episodes were all 40 minutes — they’re lean and mean,” he said. “It’s not really a one-hour drama, it’s not a half-hour comedy per se, but it also does not take itself too seriously. I was perfectly comfortable with calling it a comedy, I think more so than calling it a drama. That makes it sound so heavy!”

“A good show is a good show no matter what genre it is,” Uziel added. “I think people can recognize that.”

Outside of below-the-line categories, Spider-Noir‘s Emmy hopes rest largely on its Oscar-winning star making his streaming series debut. Expert oddsmakers aren’t confident on Cage’s Emmy chances, ranking him way down at No. 37 on the Best Comedy Actor leaderboard. But Uziel offers two choices for Emmy clips that could persuade voters otherwise, one that leans towards drama and the other that’s pure comedy. Maybe one of those moments will catch votes just like flies.