Breaking Bad wins top Emmy award

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Breaking Bad took home the top honour at Sunday’s Primetime Emmy Awards, winning the best drama series prize for the first time, as AMC’s gritty tale of a school teacher turned meth kingpin heads into the home stretch of its final season.

In the best comedy series category, ABC’s Modern Family was a return winner as the show about unconventional families won the top award for the fourth consecutive year.
The television industry’s top awards honoured a mix of old and new shows, with more than a few upsets in the acting categories, and much talk about the trends transforming today’s television - binge-watching, mobile viewing and online streaming.
TV streaming pioneer Netflix Inc’s groundbreaking political thriller House of Cards took home an award for directing, but failed to score wins in best drama and best acting categories.
Premium cable veteran HBO, which lead the field with 108 of the more than 500 nominations, proved its staying power in the increasingly competitive television industry, where basic cable and Netflix have challenged its high-quality production. Jeff Daniels, who plays a jaded anchorman in HBO’s The Newsroom scored an upset win for the best actor in a drama, while Claire Danes clinched her second consecutive best drama actress Emmy for her role as a bipolar CIA agent in Homeland.
Daniels beat front-runner Bryan Cranston, who was looking for this fourth best actor Emmy in his role as unlikely drug kingpin Walt White in the AMC drama Breaking Bad and Kevin Spacey, who made waves as a cut-throat congressman in House of Cards.
“I didn’t expect this,” Daniels said. “I usually don’t win anything. The last thing I won was for The Squid and the Whale best actor over 50 from the AARP. With all due respect to the AARP, this is better.” HBO also won the best miniseries/movie category with its slick Liberace program Behind the Candelabra.