The Television Academy has just announced the honorees for the ninth annual Television Academy Honors. The six honorees are Born This Way, The Knick, Homeland, Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief, Mississippi Inferno and Winter On Fire: Ukraine’s Fight For Freedom. The event will be held at the Montage Hotel in Beverly Hills on June 8th and will be hosted by Dana Delany (Desperate Housewives, Hand of God) who hosted last years honors as well.
Per the Television Academy, “The Television Academy Honors celebrates and recognizes programming that creates awareness, enlightens, educates and/or positively motivates audiences.”
Past honorees included Vice, Transparent, Boston Legal, and The Newsroom. The Television Academy Honors Selection Committee for this year was chaired by Lucia Gervino for the third year in a row.
“By its very nature, television has a special ability to touch the hearts and minds of viewers and move the needle on social change,” said Television Academy Chairman and CEO Bruce Rosenblum. “Each of this year’s honorees makes artful use of television’s distinct power to raise awareness, expand understanding and promote meaningful discussion of issues of importance.”
The description of the honorees are as follows:
Born This Way (A&E) – A reality series that focuses on adults born with Down syndrome and how they live their day-to-day lives. The seven young adults are shown as they seek out careers, friendship, love and pursue their dreams.
Going Clear: Scientology and the Prison of Belief (HBO) – Based on the book Going Clear by Lawrence Wright, this documentary film from Emmy-winning documentary filmmaker Alex Gibney (Enron, Taxi to the Dark Side), traces the history of abuse in Scientology from its beginnings with L. Ron Hubbard up until the present. The film features accounts from high-ranking former members of Scientology about their time in the organization and the horrors of how the Scientology system functions.
Homeland (Showtime) – In its fifth season the series, starring Claire Danes and Mandy Patinkin, deals with privacy, hacking and surveillance. These relevant themes address a fear that has been prevalent since Snowden and the Sony hacks, showing that Homeland has been able to keep up with the ever-changing fears of the world.
The Knick (Cinemax) – In season 2, Dr. John Thackery (Clive Owen) struggles to learn more about and discover a cure for addiction. He meets resistance from his medical colleagues who write off addiction as a lack of willpower rather than something that can be classified as a disease. Addiction is an issue that still runs rampant throughout the world today, and The Knick utilizes Thackery’s desperate search for a cure to highlight how much of a problem addiction is,
Mississippi Inferno (Smithsonian Channel) – This documentary, narrated by Danny Glover, highlights the vital role of African-American landowners and independent farmers played in the Civil Rights movement and the passing of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Winter On Fire: Ukraine’s Fight For Freedom (Netflix) – This Oscar-nominated documentary film focuses on student demonstrations against Viktor Yanukovich in Ukraine in 2013 and 2014. The film addresses themes of democracy and the way value different people all over the world put on freedom.