France had a big night on Monday at the International Emmys with a leading three awards, led by the hit crime thriller Engrenages (Spiral), which won for best drama series. Brazil received two Emmys, with Doce de Mae (Sweet Mother) chosen the best comedy.
The highlight of the awards ceremony at the Hilton New York came when Downton Abbey creator and writer Julian Fellowes was presented the honorary International Emmy Founders Award.
The timing was fitting with the British period drama due to wrap up its sixth and final season with a Christmas Day finale on Britain’s ITV. PBS is set to begin airing the final season in the US on January 3.
Elizabeth McGovern, who stars as Lady Cora, and the show’s executive producer Gareth Neame presented the award to Fellowes.
Downton Abbey, depicting the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their servants amid the backdrop of such historical events as the sinking of the Titanic and the First World War, has become won of the world’s most popular TV shows.
This year saw an end to Britain’s past dominance at the International Emmys, created to honour excellence in television programming outside the US. This year, 40 nominees from 19 countries were competing in 10 categories.
Britain’s only win came in the non-scripted entertainment category for 50 Ways to Kill Your Mammy, in which thrill-seeking Irish TV presenter Baz Ashmawy cajoles his 71-year-old mother into doing daredevil stunts such as skydiving and alligator wrangling.
The best actor award went to Maarten Heijmans of the Netherlands for Ramses, which chronicles the rise and fall of the popular Dutch singer and actor Ramses Shaffy. Norway’s Anneke von der Lippe won the best actress Emmy for Eyewitness in which she plays a police chief in a small town caught in the middle of a murder investigation.
Engrenages, which offers a realistic look at the French judicial system from police detectives to lawyer and judges, was a previous International Emmy nominee, but won for its fifth season in which its heroes try to unravel the double-murder of a mother and child as they plunge into a world of organised crime, drugs and girl gangs.
Soldat Blanc (White Soldier), about two young soldiers in Saigon whose friendship is shattered when they end up on opposite sides in the post-Second World War Viet Minh insurgency against French colonial rule, took the Emmy for best TV movie/mini-series.
The other French winner was Illustre & Inconnu: Comment Jacques Jaujard a Sauve le Louvre (The Man Who Saved the Louvre) about the French National Museums director who organised a resistance group to keep thousands of artworks out of the Nazis’ hands during the Second World War.
The comedy winner, Doce de Mae, stars veteran Brazilian actress Fernanda Montenegro as an aging matriarch who dispenses wisdom to her family. She won the International Emmy for the same role in 2013 and was among this year’s actress nominees.
Brazil’s Imperio (Empire), about a man who becomes wealthy by smuggling precious stones only to see his empire collapse, received the Emmy for best telenovela.
South Africa’s Miners Shot Down, which covers the 2012 Marikana massacre in which security forces fatally shot 34 miners on a wildcat strike, took the Emmy in the documentary category.
Arrepentidos - El Infierno de Montoya, the story of a once-successful Colombian actor who ends up in prison after agreeing to become a drug mule, won in the category for non-English language US Primetime programme.
Michael Douglas, who won a Primetime Emmy for his portrayal of flamboyant pianist Liberace in the HBO film Behind the Candelabra, presented the honorary International Emmy Directorate Award to Richard Plepler, chairman and CEO of HBO.
The awards ceremony, organised by the International Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, was hosted by Egyptian satirist Bassem Yousuf, dubbed “the Jon Stewart of the Arab world.”
