Netflix royal biopic The Crown took home some of the night's biggest wins. Video / AP
It's taken eight years and tens if not hundreds of millions of dollars, but Netflix has finally done it – it's won the one shiny statue it's craved, the Outstanding Series award at the Emmys.
And it did it twice, for both Drama and Limited Series with The Crown and The Queen's Gambit. It's a huge moment for the company that has had mighty but unfulfilled Emmys ambitions for eight years.
When the American streamer moved from DVD mail-outs to online streaming more than a decade ago, it astutely realised that the way to change the game is with original content.
House of Cards premiered in February 2013 and that September, became the first online only (ie. streaming) series to compete in the Primetime Emmys. It was up for nine awards including Outstanding Drama Series. David Fincher picked up a gong for directing the pilot but it lost the main award to Breaking Bad.
Netflix created the industry which now dominates American TV's most coveted awards, and it didn't take long for streamers (along with their cable network rivals) to all but push out broadcast free-to-air TV.
William Horberg and the cast and crew of The Queen's Gambit accept the award for outstanding limited or anthology series during the Primetime Emmy Awards. Photo / AP
Run your eye up and down the nominations list and there is scant evidence that America's broadcast networks – ABC, NBC, CBS, Fox, CW – are making awarded shows, especially in the scripted categories. This Is Us and Black-ish remain the free-to-air stalwarts.
Netflix amassed more than 600 Emmy nominations and 100-plus wins over the years, but the biggest awards of the night has remained elusive. It's broken records for most nominations ever – 160 in 2020 – but it's underperformed even in the Lead acting categories.
Its first Lead acting wins came in 2018, with Claire Foy for The Crown and Regina King in Limited Series Seven Seconds. Jharrel Jerome followed up in Lead Actor for Limited Series When They See Us in 2019.
And it must have been a particularly bruising eight-year journey for Netflix that while the biggest awards of the night have remained tantalisingly out-of-reach, its younger streaming competitors beat them to it, repeatedly.
The Handmaid's Tale was the first to break through for US streaming platform Hulu, when it picked up Outstanding Drama in 2017. It beat out two Netflix shows that year, the first seasons of The Crown and Stranger Things.
The team from The Crown accept the award for outstanding drama series during the Primetime Emmy Awards. Photo / AP
The following year, Amazon Prime Video won Outstanding Comedy for The Marvelous Mrs Maisel. Netflix had two shows up in the same category, Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt and GLOW. Amazon followed it up again in 2019 for Fleabag.
You could even argue that since Outstanding Comedy Series was one category earlier in the running order for this year's ceremony, Apple even beat Netflix to the game, with Ted Lasso's victory.
For TV fans who take casual note of Emmy winning shows, often as a shopping list for their watch queue or to validate their own favourites, the ceremonies throw up some rousing speeches, pretty gowns and a glimpse at the stars.
But for networks and streamers, they take the cachet of the Emmys (and all televised awards) very seriously. They campaign vigorously each year, putting on events, sending out freebies and rolling out the talent.
Anya Taylor-Joy in The Queen's Gambit. Photo / Supplied
If you've ever seen one of those roundtable videos on The Hollywood Reporter where five huge celebrities come together and bare their souls about their art – and also heap effusive praise of each other's "brave" performances, that's all part of awards campaigning.
And it costs a bundle. Forbes estimated that the price of campaigning can be up to US$1 million per show. When you're Netflix, you have a lot of shows. So, so many.
Whatever Netflix spent on this year's Emmys was worth it. The Crown broke records with a clean sweep of all seven Primetime categories – never before been done in Drama (Schitt's Creek did it last year in Comedy and Angels in America did it in 2004 in Limited Series).
The Queen's Gambit's two Emmys didn't include any acting ones, but it does the one that really counts, Outstanding Limited Series.
