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‘Bo Burnham: Inside,’ ‘Summer of Soul,’ ‘The Underground Railroad’ Among Final Round of Peabody Awards 2022 Winners (FULL LIST)

Amazon Prime Video’s “The Underground Railroad” and Netflix’s “Bo: Burnham: Inside” are among the final round of entertainment series to be honored by the Peabody Awards this year. The last crop of winners were announced Thursday morning.

“The Underground Railroad” award was presented by Ibram X. Kendi. “In Colson Whitehead’s 2016 novel, the figuratively magical network that aided enslaved people in their pursuit of freedom took on a real mythical valence: the miracle of The Underground Railroad was powered by a literal locomotive,” said Peabody in its description of the winner. “Director Barry Jenkins’s adaptation of Whitehead’s book follows the enslaved Cora, weaving in an immersive sensory experience of the land that both aided and foiled her, poignant moments of connection between characters spanning generations, and weighty lessons about the utter devastation of the transatlantic slave trade.”

It’s the latest kudo for the limited series, which comes from Plan B, Pastel and Big Indie, with Amazon Studios.

As for “Bo Burnham: Inside,” Peabody noted that “Bo Burnham’s comedy special doubles as a multimedia tour de force, an artistic manifesto, and a lockdown diary. Every new comedic musical number, with titles like ‘FaceTime with My Mom (Tonight),’ ‘Problematic,’ and ‘White Woman’s Instagram,’ feels like a call for help—the kind that gets louder and all the more disquieting the more it drones on. Burnham wrote, directed, edited, and performed this special from the confines of a single room for what feels like months on end, making it the perfect piece of Covid Era art.”

Here are Thursday’s other Peabody winners:

Arts

“Summer of Soul (…Or When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised)”
A Vulcan Productions Inc. Production, In Association with Concordia Studio, Play/Action Pictures, LarryBilly Productions, Produced by Mass Distraction Media and RadicalMedia (Hulu, Searchlight Pictures, Onyx Collective)
Description: “In the concert documentary film ‘Summer of Soul,’ musician and debut director Ahmir ‘Questlove’ Thompson puts us in the front row of a seminal event that should be as legendary as Woodstock but had been relegated to the dusty and neglected storage bins of history: the Harlem Cultural Festival in the summer of 1969. The film weaves together interviews with attendees and cultural commentators for context with astonishing footage of festival performances from the likes of Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, and many more.”

Documentaries

“Exterminate All the Brutes”
HBO Presents a Velvet Film Production (HBO/HBO Max)
Description: “In our current moment of intense dispute and contestation, when the clash of narratives and history are reduced to disputes over truth and feelings, disinformation, and gaslighting, Raoul Peck’s documentary series is an uncompromising commitment to evidence, science, ethics, and morality. It asks viewers to consider the continuing impact of racial hierarchies, land seizure, and the plunder and profit of cultures throughout the world, placing important historical movements, narratives, and alliances on the global stage rather than leaving them merely as isolated national or local stories.”

“Mayor”
American Documentary | POV, Rosewater Pictures (PBS)
Description: “How do you run a city when you don’t have a country? The documentary ‘Mayor’ answers this question by following Musa Hadid, the charismatic and compassionate mayor of Ramallah, as he goes about his daily duties running the Palestinian, West Bank city of 60,000 people. Deadpan municipal humor, quiet outrage, and civic duty in the face of staggering injustice drive this engaging film from director David Osit.”

Podcast/Radio

“Finn and the Bell”
Rumble Strip (Rumble Strip)
Description: “‘Finn and the Bell’ assembles a quiet portrait of a small Vermont community grappling with a young man’s suicide, and the beauty of its method lies in how the piece universalizes the feeling of a wake. Using a drifting, non-narrated format that emphasizes the voices of those left behind, podcast host Erica Heilman gently guides the emotion through the overwhelming pang of loss toward celebration of a life, giving us a tender treatment of a community in grief.”

News

“Escaping Eritrea”
Frontline, Channel 4 (PBS / GBH / FRONTLINE)
Description: “The task of fleeing Eritrea, the small nation sometimes reductively called the North Korea of Africa, is the kind of perilous journey that often goes unchronicled for fear of retaliation. Amid threat of incarceration, torture, and execution in a country with no free press, the subjects and filmmakers of the Frontline documentary ‘Escaping Eritrea’ conducted an unprecedented, years-long investigation. With rigor and care, the film captures not just the myriad abuses faced by Eritreans within the country and on various treacherous migration routes, but also the historical roots of the current regime.”

Children’s & Youth

“City of Ghosts”
A Netflix Original Series (Netflix)
Description: “The winsome charm of Elizabeth Ito’s ‘City of Ghosts’ lies in its simple premise: to commune with haunting specters is not a scary prospect. Instead, it’s an opportunity to learn about local history, a chance to reconnect with one’s heritage. Centered on a ‘Ghost Club’ led by Zelda, a young girl who doesn’t blink when encountering a fluffy ghost haunting a restaurant or a drumming one keeping a cafe owner up at night, this animated mockumentary series is a love letter to Los Angeles and a textured mosaic that understands the sunny city contains as many stories as it does people and buildings.”

FULL WINNERS LIST (CONSOLIDATED)

Institutional Winner
Fresh Air with Terry Gross

Career Achievement Award
Dan Rather

Peabody Award for Journalistic Integrity
TV Rain/Dozhd

Arts
“Summer of Soul (…Or When The Revolution Could Not Be Televised)” (Hulu / Searchlight Pictures / Onyx Collective)

Entertainment
“Bo Burnham: Inside” (Netflix)
“Dopesick” (Hulu)
“Hacks” (HBO/HBO Max)
“Reservation Dogs” (FX)
“Sort Of” (CBC/HBO Max)
“The Underground Railroad” (Amazon Prime Video)
“We Are Lady Parts” (Peacock and Channel 4)
“The Wonder Years” (ABC)

Documentary
“Exterminate All the Brutes” (HBO/HBO Max)
“High on the Hog: How African American Cuisine Transformed America” (Netflix)
“In the Same Breath” (HBO/HBO Max)
“Mayor” (PBS)
“Mr. SOUL!” (PBS)
“My Name is Pauli Murray” (Amazon Prime Video)
“Philly D.A.” (PBS)
“A Thousand Cuts” (PBS / GBH / Frontline)

Podcast/Radio
“Finn and the Bell” (Rumble Strip)
“Southlake” (NBC News)
“Throughline: Afghanistan: The Center of the World” (NPR)

News
“The Appointment” (ABC News)
“Day of Rage: How Trump Supporters Took the U.S. Capitol” (The New York Times)
“Escaping Eritrea” (PBS / GBH / Frontline)
“January 6th Reporting” (PBS NewsHour)
“NBC Bay Area: ‘The Moms of Magnolia Street’ & ‘No Man’s Land: Fighting for Fatherhood in a Broken System’” (NBC Bay Area)
“Politically Charged” (ABC15 Arizona)
“PRONE” (KUSA)
“‘So They Know We Existed’: Palestinians Film War in Gaza” (The New York Times)
“Transnational” (Vice News Tonight)

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.