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BENJAMONSTER AWARDS 2025: Outstanding Directing of a Comedy Series

Today's award is Outstanding Directing of a Comedy Series!

Past Awards in This Category: 2024   2023   2022   2021   2020

This year's nominees are...









PAUL W. DOWNS, Hacks "Mrs. Table" (Max)
YANA GORSKAYA, What We Do in the Shadows "The Finale" (FX)
DANNY MCBRIDE, The Righteous Gemstones "Prelude" (HBO)
JAMES PONSOLDT, Shrinking "Last Drink" (Apple TV+)
SETH ROGEN & EVAN GOLDBERG, The Studio (Apple TV+)
MORGAN SACKETT, A Man on the Inside "From Russian Hill With Love" (Netflix)
MARCOS SIEGA, Bad Monkey "The Floating-Human-Body-Parts Capital of America" (Apple TV+)

And the Winner Is...
DANNY MCBRIDE
The Righteous Gemstones "Prelude" (HBO)
For the second year in a row, the Directing Comedy award goes to The Righteous Gemstones. This time though, it was Danny McBride at the helm for the final season premiere that was unlike any other episode in the entire series. With none of the regular cast members, the show went back a couple hundred years to tell the origin story of the Gemstone family ministry with Bradley Cooper taking the central role. It was a bold and daring way to start a season and I didn't think it completely worked, but there's no denying the undertaking as a director to do something completely different than anything the show had ever done and McBride is to be commended for that.

Thoughts on the Rest of the Nominees:
There were a lot of strong episodes on this list. Maybe the biggest contender was the penultimate episode of A Man on the Inside, which captured San Francisco so beautifully it made me want to ho on a plane and head to that city. The first episode of Bad Monkey really set the tone for the type of the show it wanted to be and tone falls a lot on the director. While The Studio was sometimes over-directed, there's no denying all the fun choices they made throughout the season. "Mrs. Table" from Hacks won the writing award this year but also had some great directorial moments. The "Last Drink" episode of Shrinking wasn't as flashy as some others on this list but still struck the exact right tone. Finally, the finale of What We Do in the Shadows deserves to be on this list just for the three pitch perfect parodies of famous endings it had.

Tomorrow: Outstanding Supporting Actor of a Limited/Anthology Series!
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