HBO series Watchmen leads Emmy nominations by far with 26 nods

Nine-part dystopian drama Watchmen has eclipsed a competitive field at this year’s Emmys, up for a staggering 26 awards.

Emmy nominations are in and it’s good news for HBO.

The reported $US15 million per episode it cost to make Watchmen, a nine-part dystopian drama, has landed the series 26 nominations, far eclipsing it’s competitors including The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel, Ozark and Succession.

While there were some surprise snubs, notably Reese Witherspoon missing out for her stellar library of work, news of Watchmen’s sweep will come as no surprise to fans of the series.

The stakes were high when Damon Lindelof’s Watchmen premiered last year. Not only was it HBO’s answer for viewers in a post Game of Thrones world, but it is adapted from a 1980s comic novel with a very devoted – and outspoken – fanbase.

But where Watchmen differs from the book, and the 2009 Zack Snyder movie of the same name, is that it has time jumped from the 1980s setting to the present day (2019).

RELATED: Watchmen is bold, compulsive viewing

Regina King as Angela Abar, masked in her role as a police detective in Watchmen.

Watchmen – which streams on Binge – is set in an alternate reality in which there is no internet or smartphones, and Robert Redford has been president since the early 1990s.

The early focus is on Angela Abar (Regina King), a Tulsa, Oklahoma police detective whose masked persona is known as Sister Night. To the outside world, she’s a retired cop after a calamitous event some three years earlier.

But in reality, she’s one of a legion of masked cops who now have to hide their identities for fear of retribution against them and their families – despite the fact vigilante heroes are now outlawed.

The villain(s) of the series is a white supremacist group called The Seventh Cavalry who have co-opted the now-dead antihero Rorschach’s image on their masks. They’re the ones who are violently targeting police in Tulsa.

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Watchmen’s Don Johnson, Jean Smart, Regina King, show creator Damon Lindelof and producer Nicole Kass. Picture: Chris Delmas/AFP

While it was praised for it’s racially charged story when it aired in October, it’s an especially important watch now as Black Lives Matter rallies erupt around the world, given it resurfaced the underdocumented 1921 Tulsa race massacre.

The incident – dubbed the single worst incident of racial violence in American history – has largely been erased from US history books, with Watchmen commended for bringing it to life.

Watchmen is available to stream on Binge