The Peabody Awards have today announced their third round of winners, with We Are Lady Parts and The Wonder Years taking home prizes in the entertainment category.
Other notable winners include the HBO Max documentary In the Same Breath, which was presented by Lisa Ling, and ABC News’ The Appointment, presented by Jenny Slate.
Winners will be announced each day this week through Thursday, with celebrities will virtually presenting each of the winners online in short video clips. A full list of nominees is available here, and yesterday’s previously announced winners can be found here. Monday’s winners can be found here.
The Peabody Awards are organized by the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia.
A full list of Wednesday’s winners, alongside comments from the jurors, follows.
ENTERTAINMENT
“We Are Lady Parts”
The rebellious spirit of the Sex Pistols meets the guiding wisdom of the Quran in We Are Lady Parts, Nida Manzoor’s subversive British comedy about an all-female, all-Muslim punk band. Dressed in hijabs and ripped jeans, niqab face scarves and combat boots, the women are poised to infiltrate London’s punk patriarchy with original songs like “Voldemort Under My Headscarf” and “Ain’t No One Gonna Honour Kill My Sister But Me.” This irreverent, charming, and utterly fresh series, obliterates MENA and South Asian stereotypes and fearlessly tackles taboos about Islam, offering a multifaceted depiction of Muslim women rarely seen on screen.
Working Title Television, a part of Universal International Studios, a division of Universal Studio Group (Peacock, Channel 4)
“The Wonder Years”
Masterfully altering the comedic premise of the original series to expound on the uniqueness of Black American life in the late 1960s—the pilot opens the week Dr. King was killed—this reboot points out how much there is to overcome, still, in our current time of racial reckoning. What makes it work is the crisp, pitch-perfect timing of narrator Don Cheadle as the older, wiser version of main character Dean Williams, and the wonderfully natural portrayal of Dean in his youth by Elisha “EJ” Williams.
20th Television (ABC)
DOCUMENTARY
“In the Same Breath”
Nanfu Wang’s beautifully realized film is a personal essay-cum-verité chronicle of the early months of the pandemic in Wuhan, China. A towering achievement, the documentary offers viewers unprecedented access to the frontline workers in Wuhan hospitals during the months when no one knew much about a novel coronavirus, with many of Wang’s camera operators opting for anonymity even in the film’s credits—a powerful reminder of the risk they took in capturing what state media carefully kept out of view.
HBO Documentary Films Presents a Motto Pictures/Little Horse Crossing the River/ Little Lantern Company Production (HBO/HBO Max)
“A Thousand Cuts”
FRONTLINE’s A Thousand Cuts introduces viewers to Maria Ressa, the Nobel Prize-winning journalist who dared to champion press freedom in the face of President Rodrigo Duterte’s authoritarian crackdown on the news media in the Philippines. Directed by Ramona Diaz, the documentary takes us inside the escalating conflict between the government and Ressa’s online news site, Rappler, highlighting systems of oppression fostered by autocratic regimes and fueled by profit-driven social media networks.
FRONTLINE with CineDiaz, Motto Pictures and Concordia Studio (PBS/GBH/FRONTLINE)
PODCAST/RADIO
“Southlake”
In Southlake, a northwest Dallas suburb where a 2018 video of white high school students chanting the N-word went viral, the uproar and reckoning the controversy stirred would have put the mostly white enclave on a more inclusive path were it not for the way a school board election allowed the incident and its fallout to become a lightning rod for debate about race and “critical race theory.” In this podcast, NBC reporters Mike Hixenbaugh and Antonia Hylton take listeners through the sordid four-year history of a local story that has national implications for us all.
NBC News Audio (NBC News)
NEWS
“The Appointment”
After nearly 50 years of legal precedent with the landmark Roe v. Wade decision, The Appointment follows 21-year-old college senior “Madi,” who after discovering she is six weeks pregnant, must navigate life under the restrictive abortion ban levied last year in Texas. With concise explanations and empathetic reporting, The Appointment lays out just how common Madi’s predicament is and diligently documents the lengths Madi must go in order to obtain an abortion. Her story poignantly demonstrates the entrapments that would become more widespread after the fall of Roe.
ABC News Nightline (ABC News)
“PRONE”
Reporter Chris Vanderveen’s investigation into the deadly use of the prolonged prone restraint technique by police officers, and the department policy that supported it, proves the power of collective local reporting with direct national impact. Researching body camera footage, autopsy reports, and court filings, Vanderveen created a searchable database that provided specific patterns so reporters could report similar cases in their areas. Over two years, the database became a catalyst for multiple news stories in other cities and for uncovering preventable deaths.
KUSA-TV, KARE-TV (KUSA)
