The SAGA Awards.

As I mentioned it is currently awards season in the US entertainment industry.

This really represents a very long conversation that begins with the Golden Globe Awards in mid-January and then continues until the Oscars at the end of February.

Last night saw the contribution to the discussion from the Screen Actors Guild of America (SAGA) Awards. Unlike the Oscars this hands out awards for both film and television performances. Television is of course considered the lesser of the two art forms.

The main reason for this is that the time from a film script being commissioned and the finished product being shown to the public for the first time is often four to five years. However particularly in US TV it's very common for the second half of a season to still be in production while the first half is being broadcast. This allows the production to gauge the audience's reaction and make adjustments accordingly.

So for example if you're doing a show like "Homeland" and there's a massive terror attack in France you can quickly re-shoot a couple of scenes to reference it.

However if you want to be that on trend with a movie released in 2016 you really have to have identified the trend as far back as 2012. To my mind that's a much bigger skill.

So looking at the results of the SAGA Awards it seems to me that they're either dropping hints to their audience or asking questions of the Oscars about what they are trying to say. I obviously think that seeing who can work out those little hints for themselves is part of the fun.

However I think it is obvious that SAGA have disagreed with the Oscars over British actor Idris Elba. The Oscars failure to nominate Elba for "Beasts of No Nation" has frequently been cited as an example of their racism. SAGA not only gave Elba the best actor award for that film but also a second best actor award for his role in the TV show "Luther."

Although I tend to overplay it Idris Elba has long bothered me for two main reasons. The first is that while he is an undeniably talented actor he is nowhere near as talented as he thinks he is. After all no-one is that talented.

The second is that Elba's fame seems to come from an army of fans made up almost exclusively of somewhat sexually repressed posh white girls.

The reviews of his performances on Twitter, the Internet and even in proper newspapers and magazines written by actual journalists all seem to focus on his physicality. As such they're full of references to how tall he is, how strong he looks, how rugged he seems and what a big presence he is on screen.

It might just be me but the sub-text I get from all these reviews is; "I want to see his penis!" "Can we see his penis?!" "I've never seen a black one before!!!"

As a result I can't help but wonder if by endorsing these fans by handing awards to Elba we're not so much furthering racial equality within the entertainment industry as dragging it back to the 1970's and the Blackploitation era.

The other big news from the awards - here in the UK at least - is that as with every year "Orange Is The New Black (OITNB) won best ensemble cast in a TV comedy.

This year one of the lead actresses - Laura Prepon - used the acceptance speech to go on something of a drunken ramble about how her show has got the diversity that is missing from the rest of the industry. After all set in a prison their cast is absolutely packed with blacks and tans.

This of course gives me an opportunity to talk more about OITNB. At any given point the battle is to stop myself going of on a completely off topic ramble about OITNB.

Having all seen the mayhem I can cause with mere Youtube it almost goes without saying that I don't use online streaming services like Netflicks or Amazon Prime unless I absolutely have to. I am though more than happy to pay to watch OITNB on DVD.

This though does of course leave me seriously behind. I've only just watched season 2 while I think last night's award was presented for season 5.

If you talk about making a TV show set in an American prison everyone automatically thinks of "Oz."

So throughout pre-production and the first season OITNB were keen to make the point that they weren't trying to remake Oz. After all that's a hard hitting drama set in the secure unit of a maximum security men's prison. OITNB is more of a comedy set in a minimum security women's prison.

However in the second season the lure of Oz became a little too much so OINTB introduced this new character "Yvonne" or simply "V." She set about convincing all the other black prisoners that they were victims of a racist system. After isolating them from all the other prisoners she then set her girls to work selling drugs etc.

To my mind that storyline made a fantastic mockery of the "Black Lives Matter (BLM) campaign. Slightly before the BLM campaign began.

Also that season revealed the backstory of the "Miss Rosa" character. It was quite a surprise to discover that she was supposed to be Hispanic. After all you didn't need to discover she was played by "Barbara Rosenblat" for it to be obvious that she was of eastern European, Jewish heritage.

However I gather that in a later season one of the story lines is a big quest for a Mikvah. That sounds like a joke about "Jew-washing" to me.

Also if I you are a fan of OITNB you really need to be aware of an Australian show called "Wentworth Prison" which is also set in a women's prison.

Inspired by Oz and the movie "Chopper" this is an attempt at a hard hitting remake of a show from the 1970's and 1980's called "Prisoner Cell Block H." That remains something of a kitsch classic with the shaky sets and even shakier scripts providing much of the unintentional comedy.

So while I think OITNB and Wentworth Prison are examples of similar ideas appearing independently of each other they are very clearly aware of each other leading to a bit of a back and forth.

For example if a character in OITNB gets pregnant then pretty soon a character in Wentworth Prison will get pregnant. If Wentworth Prison does a storyline centred around the prison garden then OINTB will suddenly discover its prison also has a garden.

15:35 on 31/1/16 (UK date).