‘Dopesick,’ ‘Reservation Dogs’ Among First Round of Peabody Awards Winners: Day 1 Complete List

Hulu’s “Dopesick” was the first program honored as the Peabody Awards started announcing the winners of its 2022 awards on Monday morning. Other honorees on day one included FX’s “Reservation Dogs.”

The virtual announcements, which will take place all week, kicked off with Jon Stewart presenting the award for “Dopesick,” which was accepted by star Michael Keaton. “Tackling such an important issue as the opioid crisis in America was not only daunting but well worth it. We are so honored to receive this award from an institution like the Peabody Awards,” Keaton said. “To address the devastation that has been brought on by the Sackler family and big Pharma, and still honor the people in Appalachia, which isn this case is what we chose as the location, and still show enormous respect for these people, all this is really gratifying for me.”

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In his presentation, Stewart added, ‘Sometimes to drive these stories home you have to dramatize them. You have to make them human. And man, does ‘Dopesick’ do that. This stories they tell bring home the real toll of the opioid epidemic in ways you can’t look away from. A heartbreaking, realistic and true to life portrait of all that everyone’s been through. And Michael Keaton don’t miss! It doesn’t matter what he does. It’s must watch.”

Peabody lauded “Dopesick” for bringing to life “the ongoing opioid epidemic in the United States, courtesy of the now-infamous Sackler family, owners of Purdue Pharma, the company responsible for the drug OxyContin. The Michael Keaton-starring limited series is truly a gut punch, forcing us to see, constantly and unwaveringly, how the choices the Sackler family and its company made directly led to the destruction of countless lives and families.”

“Dopesick” comes from Hulu, Danny Strong Productions, John Goldwyn Productions, The Littlefield Company, 20th Television. Watch the “Dopesick” presentation here:

As for “Reservation Dogs,” from FX Productions, the series was recognized this way: “‘Reservation Dogs’ follows the scrappy adventures of four indigenous youth—Elora, Bear, Cheese and Willie—as they drift through life in Oklahoma. Co-creators Taika Waititi and Sterlin Harjo, citizen of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma, offer a long-overdue show that takes seriously the hopes, dreams, and electricity of its youthful native protagonists while tackling fatherless households, addiction, discrimination, and grief with aplomb. The series brims with surrealist imagination and deadpan humor that vividly captures a sense of defiant joy in the face of withering dislocation.”

Ethan Hawke presented the “Reservation Dogs” award; co-creator Sterlin Harjo accepted on behalf of the series. Watch their video below.

Ethan Hawke Presents "Reservation Dogs" with a Peabody Award from Peabody Awards on Vimeo.

Here are the rest of Monday’s winners:

DOCUMENTARY

“High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America”
A One Story Up Production and Pilgrim Media Group for Netflix (Netflix)

Description: “Building on the research of food historian Dr. Jessica B. Harris, ‘High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America’ charts the evolution of Black foodways with both clarity and awe. Taking viewers across the Atlantic from Benin to South Carolina and up the eastern coast of the United States, High on the Hog serves as a corrective to histories that have excluded Black people’s contributions from this country’s culinary records.”

“Mr. SOUL!”
Shoes In The Bed Productions, ITVS, Black Public Media (BPM), WNET (PBS)

Description: “A joyful tribute to the local television program ‘SOUL!’ and its creator, the impresario Ellis Haizlip, the documentary film ‘Mr. SOUL!’ is a loving celebration of Black creative achievement and vitality in late twentieth-century America, capturing the majesty, confidence, and revolutionary force of Black artists, intellectuals, writers, and performers. The time between 1968 and 1972 was an extraordinary period in American broadcast television and cultural history, and Haizlip’s ‘SOUL!’ was uncompromisingly and unapologetically Black, serving as a visual and sonic record of Black Americans at their most radical.

NEWS

“Politically Charged”
ABC15 Arizona (KNXV)
Description: “ABC15 Arizona’s reports on the arrests of street protesters and the very questionable tactics used against them by local police is a compelling series that warns us of the present-day erosion of our civil liberties. The investigation found that, in 2020, Phoenix police and county prosecutors routinely exaggerated and lied to grand juries to obtain felony charges against protesters. As a direct result of this series, 39 felony protest cases were dismissed, high-level officials resigned, the police chief was suspended, dozens of officers and prosecutors were reassigned, and the Department of Justice opened a sweeping pattern-of-practice investigation.”

“Transnational”
Vice News (Vice News Tonight)
Description: “Vice’s series ‘Transnational’ spotlights the stories of various trans communities around the world: from the ballroom scene in Detroit to a government-sponsored safe haven in Mexico City, with stops in the United Kingdom and Indonesia along the way. In grouping them together and cutting across them—building, as it were, a trans-national collective—Vice’s team pushes back against notions of the global trans community as being any kind of monolith, honoring collectivity in individuality, the many in the few.”

“‘So They Know We Existed’: Palestinians Film War in Gaza”
The New York Times (The New York Times)
Description: “In just a heart-wrenching 14 minutes, “So They Know We Existed” captures the devastation to daily civilian life during the 11-day war between Israel and Hamas in May 2021 in Gaza. Citizen cell phone footage from the attacks and interviews after the fact document a harrowing portrait of life amid warfare, from a 10-year-old girl to teenage sisters; a young man who lost his father; a musician who lost his livelihood to an explosion, among others. The piece presents a range of civilian Palestinian perspectives and bears witness to the resilience of those who continue to survive the trauma of war long after ceasefire.”

PODCAST/RADIO

“Throughline: ‘Afghanistan: The Center of the World’”
Throughline (NPR)
Description: “Throughline’s magisterial three-part miniseries on Afghanistan offers the long view of a country that Americans often treat as a threat, afterthought, or tragedy, particularly after the chaotic withdrawal of the U.S. military in 2021. By centering the country in its own story and pulling back the frame to consider Afghanistan as a full “civilization,” the team restores a necessary sense of scale to what is often lost in our understanding of the region across the decades and centuries of countless western media reports.”

Already revealed: “Fresh Air with Terry Gross” has been named this year’s recipient of the Institutional Award (presented by Stephen Colbert), while Dan Rather has won the Career Achievement Award (presented by Dolly Parton). TV Rain/Dozhd received the Journalistic Integrity Award.

Here is the full list of the 60 nominees for the 82nd Annual Peabody Awards. Peabody Awards are given in the categories of entertainment, documentary, news, podcast/radio, arts, children’s and youth and public service programming, and were founded in 1940 at the Grady College of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Georgia.

PBS led the field with 13 programs qualifiying as finalists, followed by HBO with eight and Hulu and Netflix with five apiece.

A unanimous vote by the Peabody Awards Board’s 19 jurors is necessary for include on the final lists, which is how the 60 nominees are culled from over 1,200 entries. Among the selections are stories from underrepresented groups that encompass a wide range of issues, including the Jan. 6 insurrection, access to abortion, trans rights and the continuing struggle for criminal justice reform.

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