
Geektown Awards – Best New & Returning Non-Sci-fi Drama
It’s a brand new year, and as is traditional here at Geektown, we kick it off by announcing the winners of the Geektown Awards! Two very happy people have had an awesome start to the new year when they got phone calls telling them they had won the prize draw. Let’s see if we can make some TV shows happy too as we start by announcing the Best New & Returning Non-Sci-fi Drama categories. Here are the shows you voted for!
Best New Non-Sci-fi Drama
Nominees: 13 Reasons Why, Atypical, Jamestown, Mindhunter, Sneaky Pete, The Handmaid’s Tale, This Is Us, Tin Star
Bronze: Mindhunter
Silver: 13 Reasons Why
And the Gold goes to …
The Handmaid’s Tale
Whilst competition was close for the bronze and silver awards, right from the start, there was a clear front-runner for this category. Hulu’s adaptation of the classic novel by Margaret Atwood aired in May on Channel 4 in the UK and is set in Gilead, a dystopia totalitarian society in what was formerly the United States. Facing environmental disasters and a plunging birth rate, Gilead is ruled by a twisted fundamentalism in its militarized ‘return to traditional values’.
The story follows Offred (Elisabeth Moss – ‘The West Wing’, ‘Mad Men’) is a Handmaid in the household of Commander Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes – ‘Shakespeare in Love’, ‘American Horror Story’). She serves as one of the castes of women forced into sexual servitude as a last desperate attempt to repopulate the world. In this terrifying society, Offred must navigate between Commanders, their cruel Wives, domestic Marthas, and her fellow Handmaids – where anyone could be a spy for Gilead – all with one goal: to survive and find the daughter that was taken from her.
Best Returning Non-Sci-fi Drama
Nominees: Better Call Saul, Designated Survivor, Mr. Robot, Narcos, Orange is the New Black, Peaky Blinders, Suits, The Crown, Vikings
Bronze: Better Call Saul
Silver: Orange is the New Black
And the Gold goes to…
Peaky Blinders
Last year the drama about 1920’s Birmingham gangsters took Bronze. This year it shoots up into the top spot landing the Gold award. I’m sure Tommy would approve! The series returned to our screens in November, which saw the Peaky’s go up against their toughest opponent yet – The Mafia. Whilst they make it out the other side of the conflict (they have Season 5 to make, so they kinda had to), it wasn’t without some devastating loss. The gripping, compelling drama returns in 2019.

3 comments
Why is The Handmaid’s Tale non-SF? The book it’s based on won the Arthur C. Clarke award for best SF of 1987.
Hummm… I’d argue it could be seen as either at this point. Just looked up the dictionary definition of sci-fi and it’s “fiction based on imagined future scientific or technological advances and major social or environmental changes, frequently portraying space or time travel and life on other planets.” It has the major social change, so you are correct, but it feels more grounded than being straight up sci-fi. I’m not saying it isn’t technically sci-fi, it just felt less sci-fi than the other things in the sci-fi category, and felt could work in the non-sci-fi category too. :)
It will be interesting to see if it appears on the ballot for this year’s Hugo awards at the World Science Fiction Convention. Nominations open soon.
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