Nominees Get a Look From Panel of One

Quiet, please! This televised hearing into the 1995 Emmy Award nominations is now gaveled to order.

As chairman and sole member of the investigating committee, I want to state for the record that this hearing has no agenda other than to examine Thursday’s 47th annual nominations for nighttime programs as a basis for better understanding them. To be candid, some of them are not easy to understand.

First, as to the comedy series nominations: The committee lauds the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences for citing “The Larry Sanders Show,” the HBO series that, in the chairman’s opinion, is far and away the best comedy on television, a hilarious satire that mercilessly needles the TV business. And the other nominees--NBC’s “Seinfeld,” “Frasier,” “Mad About You” and the first-season “Friends”--are all worthy.

But no more Mr. Nice Guy! The committee is flabbergasted--no, make that shocked and appalled--that, once again, academy voters have spurned ABC’s “Roseanne.” Seven cosmic seasons and not one best series nomination? That’s scandalous.

The nominated NBC comedies are all cleverly conceived and executed laugh-getters. But “Roseanne,” along with ABC’s also-deserving “Grace Under Fire,” is comedy that is about something--transcendent comedy that, beyond being consistently funny, displays unique empathy for working-class America at a time when the nation is especially troubled and at odds with itself.

Awards are inevitably partnered with irony and even paradox, and the Emmys are no exception. Go figure. Roseanne herself is again nominated for best comedy actress. Her “Roseanne” husband, John Goodman, is again nominated for best actor in a comedy series. Her “Roseanne” sister, Laurie Metcalf, is nominated for best supporting actress.

Whoa! Does this mean these poor babies give superior performances despite being burdened by inferior scripts and direction? “Roseanne” even got a nomination for hairstyling. Apparently, in the eyes of academy voters, it coifs more successfully than it entertains.

As for drama, the chairman is especially gratified by the academy’s decision to nominate Claire Danes of ABC’s canceled “My So-Called Life” in the best series actress category, and she deserves to win. The chairman could argue that, despite its unevenness, her teen-ager-coming-of-age series deserved a nomination too. When it worked, it was stratospheric, soaring higher than such other nominated drama series as CBS’ “Chicago Hope” and NBC’s revved-up ratings behemoth “ER.” It would be hard to argue against the remaining nominees: ABC’s “NYPD Blue,” Fox’s “The X-Files” and NBC’s “Law & Order.”

Most striking in the made-for-television movie category is the prominence of cable’s HBO, affirming its status as the only network regularly making movies that matter. Yet its nominees, “The Burning Season,” “Citizen X” and “Indictment: The McMartin Trial,” were flawed docudramas that aspired to more than they achieved. On the other hand, NBC’s “Serving in Silence: The Margarethe Cammermeyer Story” is this category’s misfit and CBS’ “The Piano Player” easily its class.

Meanwhile, the chairman appreciates the sense of humor of the academy noodles who nominated CBS’ plodding, largely pedestrian “Buffalo Girls” in the miniseries/special category.

He was also hoping to introduce his gavel to their hollow craniums for omitting the miniseries “A Dark Adapted Eye” and its cast. The chairman was planning to argue that “A Dark Adapted Eye”--a complex, twisty and disturbing British production that aired as part of the PBS “Mystery!” series--was the best, most provocative dramatic work anywhere on TV during the 1994-95 season. And that Celia Imre’s performance in that drama, as a woman hanged for murdering the younger sister she adored, was unmatched this season.

The chairman would still make that argument. As it turns out, though, the “Mystery!” office at WGBH-TV in Boston reports that “A Dark Adapted Eye” was not entered in the Emmys, even though “Mystery!’s” splendid “Prime Suspect” series has always been entered and won the miniseries Emmy in 1993 and 1994.

Why wasn’t “A Dark Adapted Eye” submitted? “It just wasn’t,” someone in the “Mystery!” office told the chairman by phone. That is mysterious.

Finally, this explanation about the brevity and unusual nature--some might say one-sidedness--of this hearing. Unfortunately, the investigating committee was able to secure the hearing room for only a limited number of inches, leaving no space for responses from the academy. The chairman deeply regrets this. On the other hand, he notes that unfairness is something with which the academy is familiar.