Emmys Review: Virtual Show Was a Surprising Triumph of Producing

variety.com:

Daniel D'Addario Chief TV CriticOpening this year’s Emmy Awards, host Jimmy Kimmel told the audience — the one at home, given that there was no one sitting before him in the stands of the Staples Center — that there were a great many moving parts in piecing together the ceremony.

He asked, mordantly, “What could possibly go right?”It turns out: Quite a bit. Pieced together with just enough in the way of production value to feel nourishingly of the once-and-future world and with a happy willingness to indulge serendipity that felt brand-new, the first major awards ceremony of the COVID era was imperfect, and knew it.

But it met its moment with elán, charm and a level of effort so profound as to seem effortless — the sort of thing live TV at.