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‘Ted Lasso,’ ‘The Crown,’ Win Top Emmy Awards on Streaming Heavy Night

Actor Jason Sudeikis poses with the award for outstanding lead actor in comedy series, for “Ted Lasso”, at the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, US, September 19, 2021. (Reuters)
Actor Jason Sudeikis poses with the award for outstanding lead actor in comedy series, for “Ted Lasso”, at the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, US, September 19, 2021. (Reuters)
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‘Ted Lasso,’ ‘The Crown,’ Win Top Emmy Awards on Streaming Heavy Night

Actor Jason Sudeikis poses with the award for outstanding lead actor in comedy series, for “Ted Lasso”, at the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, US, September 19, 2021. (Reuters)
Actor Jason Sudeikis poses with the award for outstanding lead actor in comedy series, for “Ted Lasso”, at the 73rd Primetime Emmy Awards in Los Angeles, US, September 19, 2021. (Reuters)

Royal drama “The Crown” and feel-good comedy “Ted Lasso” nabbed the top prizes at television’s Emmy awards on Sunday on a night dominated by streaming shows, British talent and rare wins by women.

Chess drama “The Queen’s Gambit” was named best limited series and tied with “The Crown” for the most wins overall at 11 apiece.

The best drama series win for “The Crown” gave Netflix its biggest prize so far, while Apple TV+ entered streaming’s big league with the best comedy series win for “Ted Lasso.” Neither Netflix nor Apple TV+ had previously won a best comedy or best drama series Emmy.

Jason Sudeikis, the star and co-creator of “Ted Lasso,” was named best comedy actor. The show also brought statuettes for Britons Hannah Waddingham and Brett Goldstein for their supporting roles in the tale of a struggling English soccer team that won over TV fans with its folksy humor during the dark days of the coronavirus pandemic.

“This show is about family. This show’s about mentors and teachers and this show’s about teammates. And I wouldn’t be here without those three things in my life,” Sudeikis said on Sunday.

Despite a nominees list that boasted the strongest showing in years for people of color, only a handful emerged as winners.

They included Britain’s Michaela Coel, who won for writing the harrowing sexual assault drama “I May Destroy You” in which she also starred and directed; RuPaul, host of the competition show “RuPaul’s Drag Race;” and the cast of hip-hop Broadway musical “Hamilton,” which won the Emmy for variety special after it was filmed for television.

Dancer, singer and actor Debbie Allen was given an honorary award celebrating 50 years in show business. “It’s taken a lot of courage to be the only woman in the room most of the time,” Allen said.

It was a good night for women, and for Britons.

“Write the tale that scares you, that makes you feel uncertain, that isn’t comfortable,” said Coel, who dedicated her Emmy to sexual assault survivors.

Lucia Aniello got a rare directing win for a woman for the comedy series “Hacks” about a fading female comedian. She also was one of the winning co-writers. Britain’s Jessica Hobbs took home a directing Emmy for “The Crown.”

“Not a lot of women have won this award so I feel like I am standing on the shoulders of some really extraordinary people,” Hobbs said.

Seven of the 12 acting awards went to Britons, including Olivia Colman and Josh O’Connor for playing Queen Elizabeth and heir to the throne Prince Charles in a fourth season of “The Crown” that focused on the unhappy marriage of Charles and Princess Diana.

“We’re all thrilled. I am very proud. I’m very grateful. We’re going to party,” said Peter Morgan, creator of “The Crown,” at a gathering in London for the cast and crew.

An exuberant Kate Winslet won for her role as a downtrodden detective in limited series “Mare of Easttown,” while Ewan McGregor was a surprise winner for playing fashion designer “Halston.”

Concerns over the Delta variant of the coronavirus forced Sunday’s ceremony to move to an outdoor tent in downtown Los Angeles, with a reduced guest list and mandatory vaccinations and testing but a red carpet that harked back to pre-pandemic times.

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Entertainment

Pulp Is Back for ‘More,’ Their First Album in 24 Years. Even the Britpop Band Is Surprised 

Jarvis Cocker of the band Pulp performs at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Sept. 18, 2024, (AP) 
Jarvis Cocker of the band Pulp performs at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Sept. 18, 2024, (AP) 
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Pulp Is Back for ‘More,’ Their First Album in 24 Years. Even the Britpop Band Is Surprised 

Jarvis Cocker of the band Pulp performs at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Sept. 18, 2024, (AP) 
Jarvis Cocker of the band Pulp performs at the Hollywood Palladium in Los Angeles on Sept. 18, 2024, (AP) 

Pulp has returned with a new album, their first in 24 years. Who could’ve predicted that?

Not even the band, it turns out. “It took us by surprise as well,” dynamic frontman Jarvis Cocker told The Associated Press. “Why not?”

If there are casual Pulp fans, they don’t make themselves known. The ambitious Britpop-and-then-some band emerged in the late-'70s in Sheffield, England, artistic outsiders with a penchant for the glam, grim, and in the case of Cocker, the gawky. Fame alluded them until the mid-'90s, and then it rushed in with the trend of Cool Britannia.

Their songs varied wildly from their contemporaries, like the recently reunited Blur and soon-to-be back together Oasis. Instead, Pulp’s David Bowie-informed synth-pop arrived with humor, ambiguity and intellect — songs about class consciousness that manage to be groovy, glib, awkward and amorous all at once.

Then, and in the decades since, Pulp has inspired devotion from loyal fans across generations. They’ve charmed those lucky enough to catch band members in their heyday before a kind of careerism led to a hiatus in 2002 — and those who saw them for the first time during reunion tours in 2011 and 2022. With all that reputation on the line, it’s reassuring that the band has decided to give its audience “More,” their first new album in over two decades.

Give them ‘More’

There were a few catalysts for “More.” The first: “We could get along with each other still,” jokes drummer Nick Banks. “It wasn’t too painful.” The second: The band worked a new song into their recent reunion show run — “The Hymn of the North,” originally written for Simon Stephens’ 2019 play “Light Falls” — and people seemed to like it.

The third and most significant: The band’s bassist and core member Steve Mackey died in 2023.

“It made me realize that you don’t have endless amounts of time,” Cocker says. “You’ve still got an opportunity to create things, if you want to. Are you going to give it a go?”

And so, they did. Cocker assured his bandmates Banks, guitarist Mark Webber and keyboardist Candida Doyle that the recording process could be done quickly — in three weeks, lightspeed for a band that has infamously agonized over its latter records, like 1998’s “This Is Hardcore.”

Webber describes a “reticence to get involved in a yearslong process” that was alleviated when they started to work on new songs which came “quite easily.” That’s at least partially due to the fact that, for the first time in the history of the band, Cocker elected to “write the words in advance. ... It’s taken me until the age of 61 to realize it: If you write the words before you go into the studio, it makes it a much more pleasant experience.”

The 11 tracks that make up “More” are a combination of new and old songs written across Pulp’s career. The late Mackey has a writing credit on both the sultry, existential “Grown Ups” originally demoed around “This Is Hardcore,” and the edgy disco “Got to Have Love,” written around “the turn of the millennium,” as Cocker explains. “I did have words, but I found myself emotionally unable to sing them.”

“Without love you’re just making a fool of yourself,” he sings in the second verse. “I got nothing else to say about it.”

It makes sense, then, that the romantic song was held until “More,” when Cocker believed them — coincidentally, after he was married in June of last year.

A pop band reflects

Maturation — the literality of growing up on “Grown Ups” — is a prevalent theme on “More,” delivered with age-appropriate insight. “I was always told at school that I had an immature attitude. I just didn’t see any point in growing up, really. It seemed like all the fun was had by people when they were younger,” said Cocker.

“But, as I said on the back of the ‘This Is Hardcore’ album, it’s OK to grow up, as long as you don’t grow old. And I still agree with that, I think. Growing old is losing interest in the world and deciding that you’re not gonna change. You’ve done your bit and that’s it. That doesn’t interest me.”

“You have to retain an interest in the world and that keeps you alive,” he adds. “So, you grow up. And hopefully you live better, and you treat other people better. But you don’t grow old.”

In addition to “More,” 2025 marks the 30th anniversary of the song that defines their career, “Common People.”

“That one, we’ve never really fallen out of love with,” says Webber.

“Because of the way it affects people, really, you can’t fall out of love with it,” adds Cocker.

“More,” produced by James Ford (Arctic Monkeys, Fontaines D.C.), arrives Friday. The band will immediately embark on a UK and North American tour. Then, who knows? Is this the beginning of a new, active era for the band?

“The next one is going to be called ‘Even More,’” Cocker jokes. “Nah, I don’t know. The album wasn’t conceived of as a tombstone. ... The jury is out.”

“It wouldn’t be good for it to end up feeling like you’re stuck on a treadmill,” Banks adds. “And at the moment, it’s still pretty exciting.”