Why Is The Bear Considered a Comedy in Awards Shows? The Reason It’s Not in the Drama Category, Explained

We can all agree that The Bear is one of the best (and most stressful) shows on streaming and TV right now. It’s winning awards left and right in the Comedy category, but if you’ve watched the show, you are probably scratching your head…because it’s more dramatic than comedy.

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Even the hosts of the 76th Emmy Awards poked fun at the fact that it’s nominated in the category. “Now, I love the show, I love the show, and I know some of you will be expecting us to make a joke about whether The Bear is really a comedy — but in the true spirit of ‘The Bear,’ we will not be making any jokes,” Dan Levy said in the opening monologue. The show was nominated for a record number in 2024 for the most amount of nominations in a year for a comedy series—with 23 nominations in total.

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Why is The Bear considered a comedy?

The Bear finds humor in every tragic event and conversation in the series. Despite the underlying theme of grief when Carmy’s brother died by suicide in season 1, the different knacks of the cooks are highlighted and we’ll admit, we have chuckled during one of the times that Carmy and Syd have playfully teased each other. Or that bizarre moment in the season 1 finale when Syd stabbed Richie. Or when the Faks made some gibberish comments in between those stressful renovating moments. You get the point.

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The way that the TV Academy has considered shows in the comedy category used to be very strict. According to The Hollywood Reporter , the TV Academy “has considered a comedy to be a half-hour of television” prior to 2022. Though after the entertainment site reported that “several shows are blurring the lines between comedy and drama in both tone and episode length.” Netflix’s Orange Is The New Black was considered a drama, though producers of the show pushed the show to be ruled as a comedy. A TV Academy ruling in 2015 determined that shows over 30 minutes must be submitted as dramas or formally petitioned for the other category. The result was that the show was submitted for both a drama and a comedy.

Will The Bear ever be considered a drama? Maybe, but as TV blurs the lines of genres, it could possibly be one as the seasons roll on by.