‘Marvelous Mrs. Maisel’ wins big at 2018 Emmy Awards

Amazon Studio’s streaming  “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel,” a show set in 1950s New York with a great many Jewish characters, ran away with the comedy categories at Monday night’s 70th Annual Emmy Awards ceremonies in Los Angeles.

The show, in its second season, won the Outstanding Comedy Series Award, the first time the category was won by a streaming TV series.

Rachel Brosnahan, who is not Jewish, won an Emmy for Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy playing Miriam “Midge” Maisel, the fictional Jewish housewife who decides to become a standup comic. She was joined by Alexandrea Bornstein, who won as Outstanding Featured Actress in a Comedy, as the budding star’s manager.

Amy Sherman-Palladino, a writer noted for her rapid-fire dialog in popular series like “Bunheads” and “Gilmore Girls,” picked up an Emmy for Best Comedy Writing while wearing one of her many trademarked top hats. Sherman-Palladino, whose father was the late Jewish comedian Don Sherman, identifies as “Jewish. Sort of,” even though her mother is a Southern Baptist.

The series was renewed for a third season in May before its second season had begun airing.

Earlier in the evening, Jewish actor Henry Winkler took home his first Emmy win for Best Supporting Actor in a Comedy Series for his role as Gene Cousineau in the Bill Hader-starring HBO series “Barry.” It was Winkler’s first win after four decades in television, beginning with his iconic role as Arthur “The Fonz” Fonzarelli on “Happy Days.”

Jewish director Glenn Weiss stole the show with a live on-air engagement to his girlfriend Jan Svendsen after winning an Emmy (Outstanding Direction of a Variety Special) for his direction of this year’s Academy Awards. Weiss revealed first that his mother had passed away only two weeks before, but that he was getting engaged with the very ring his father used to become betrothed to his mother 67 years before.