‘Ted Lasso,’ ‘The Late Show with Stephen Colbert,’ ‘Asian Americans’ Among First Batch of 2021 Peabody Award Winners
“Ted Lasso” and “The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” are among the first batch of this year’s Peabody Award winners. Peabody is slowly announcing all 30 of its winners throughout the week; on Monday, the org announced its first eight recipients.
A total of 60 nominees were announced as nominees in May, representing “the most compelling and empowering stories released in broadcasting and streaming media during 2020.” The Peabody Awards Board of Jurors selected this year’s nominees for entertainment, documentaries, news, podcast/radio, children’s & youth, public service and arts.
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Here are the honorees announced on Monday:
Entertainment
“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” (CBS)
“Ted Lasso” (Apple TV Plus)
Documentary
“Asian Americans” (PBS)
“Time” (Amazon Studios)
Podcast/Radio
“Floodlines” (The Atlantic)
News
“Full Disclosure” (KNXV-TV)
“China Undercover” Frontline (PBS / WGBH)
Children’s & Youth
“The Owl House” (Disney Channel)
This year’s remaining awards will continue to be presented virtually through Thursday, between 9 a.m. and 10:30 a.m. each morning, at peabodyawards.com. Presenter and acceptance speeches can also be found at https://peabodyawards.com/2021-acceptance-videos/.
Here is how Peabody described the winning entrants:
ENTERTAINMENT
“The Late Show with Stephen Colbert” (produced by CBS Studios): “With filming restrictions in place, Stephen Colbert decided to move production of his CBS Late Show to his home outside of Charleston, a remarkably successful transformation of the late-night television model by a host inviting us into his home, rather than his typical comforting presence in our living rooms and bedrooms. Amidst suffering in a global pandemic, a public fed up with police violence against African Americans, and a morally contemptuous president fighting for his political life, Colbert’s kindness, gentle spirit, and deeply felt ethical nature provided a nightly salve the nation desperately needed.”
“Ted Lasso” (produced by Apple / Doozer Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television and Universal Television): “What this presumably Ugly American, fish-out-of-water tale offers us is a charming dose of radical optimism, with an equally endearing Jason Sudeikis as Ted Lasso. It turns out that more than simply a sports coach, Ted is remarkably good at honest communication with others, affecting change by being a deeply good human, one with his own quiet anxieties and pain. The Apple TV Plus series is the perfect counter to the enduring prevalence of toxic masculinity, both on-screen and off, in a moment when the nation truly needs inspiring models of kindness.”
DOCUMENTARY
“Asian Americans” (produced by CAAM, WETA, Flash Cuts, LLC., Tajima-Peña Productions, ITVS): “Renee Tajima-Peña’s five-part documentary series places Asian communities at the center of debates about belonging and citizenship in America. The series asks us to consider who gets to be at the center of these American stories, offering the requisite national, ethnic, religious, political, linguistic, and cultural diversity that make up Asian American communities across the country today. In turn, we move beyond a singular representative testimony and bear witness to varying, complex, and touching portraits of individuals, identities, enclaves, and movements, collectively born in the face of tragedy and in spite of the burdens of trauma.”
“Time” (produced by Concordia Studio, GB Feature, LLC and Amazon Studios): “This remarkable story of love and the impact of incarceration on a family is detailed through the multiple, often elusive registers of time—slow time, long time, happy time, missed time, hopeful time, and arrested time. In this brilliantly conceived, beautifully realized, and brutally honest chronicle, we travel with Fox Rich and her family toward her husband’s release and their collective freedom. Carefully building and then mining the archive of family memories, home movies, prison visits, high school and college graduations, filmmaker Garrett Bradley proffers viewers the power of dreams and the struggle to shape and sustain love and life across the divides of incarceration.”
PODCAST/RADIO
“Floodlines” (produced by The Atlantic): “This captivating podcast is a comprehensive story of Hurricane Katrina and its social, cultural, psychological, political, economic, and environmental aftermath and impact. From the national media’s ready-made criminalization of Black residents and their worthiness to be rescued, to the insensitive early response of national government officials, Floodlines also asks us to consider what happens to place, home, relationships, and community when politics, incompetence, and indifference are at the core of how we regard each other.”
NEWS
“Full Disclosure” (produced by ABC15 Arizona): “Digging into Arizona’s “Brady list,” a system designed to track police officers with histories of lying and committing crimes in hopes of keeping police accountable, this hour-long special from ABC15 Arizona offers a stark portrait not only of why the system is broken, but why it has never been fixed. The yearlong investigation, with exhaustive reporting and damning video footage, demonstrates how law enforcement agencies rarely adhere to their own legal standards in keeping and disseminating such misconduct reports.”
“China Undercover” (produced by Frontline): “This documentary uncovers the story of China’s arresting an estimated two million Uyghur Muslims and putting them in concentration camps—what experts says is the largest mass incarceration of an ethnic group since the Holocaust. But the report also makes the case that this is a massive experiment in developing the most complete surveillance state in history, as the government employs technologies such as advanced algorithmic facial recognition software and houses marked with digital barcodes to monitor and ultimately detain Muslims whose behavior is “predicted” as threatening.”
CHILDREN’S & YOUTH
“The Owl House” (produced by Disney Television Animation): “Alice in Wonderland. Dorothy in Oz. Coraline in Other World. To that list we should now add: Luz in Boiling Isles. Luz crosses a mysterious threshold and finds herself in a magical, colorful land where she finds both the strength and the support group she needs to become who she’s meant to be. The Dana Terrace-created animated series builds a wildly inventive other world that makes room for everyone and gives queer kids a welcome template alongside which to explore their own budding creative energies.”
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