JANE THE VIRGIN Among Winners of 74th Annual Peabody Awards; Full List

From an honorable woman entangled in Israeli-Palestine conflicts to a virginal Jane, from a faux-American spy to an irrepressible North Dakota cop, strong, multi-dimensional women stand out in the 74th Peabody Awards' entertainment winners, affirming the continuing expansion of significant roles for women on television.

The list of entertainment programs chosen for the 74th annual Peabody Awards at the University of Georgia include The Honorable Woman, a richly textured BBC drama that illuminates byzantine complexities in Middle East relations and boasts a towering lead performance by Maggie Gyllenhaal; Comedy Central's Inside Amy Schumer, a sharp-witted blend of sketches and interviews that's distinctly female yet gender-inclusive; and Jane the Virgin, a visually and narratively innovative CW series that employs the soap-operatic, telenovela form to tell a serialized tale, by turns whimsical and poignant, about a household of three generations of Latina women.

The Peabody Board of Judges also chose FX's The Americans, an ingenious melodrama about Reagan-era Soviet spies - married and the parents of budding American dreamers - that makes viewers care about them and their increasingly conflicted loyalties, and Fargo, which pits an upstanding, undeniable female cop against an almost Supernatural villain. The FX series maintains the darkly comic tone of the Oscar-winning theatrical film while unspooling a distinctly different, more complex story.

Other entertainment winners were The Knick, Cinemax's fascinating historical drama about pioneering surgeons at an early 20th-century New York hospital; HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver, which revisits the previous week's news with a satiric eye and an investigative reporter's curiosity; Sundance TV's Rectify, an understated, powerful drama about a wrongly convicted man struggling to reconnect to his Georgia community after 20 years in prison; and Black Mirror, a dramatic anthology from Britain's Channel 4 that explores unsettling moral and ethical questions that bring to mind the work of Rod Serling and Roald Dahl.

The Peabody Awards' news and radio winners will be announced on Monday, April 20 on this page, as will recipients in the areas of documentary, public service, education, and children's programming on Thursday, April 23.

Individual and institutional Peabodys, previously announced, are respectively going to Sir David Attenborough, the renowned British nature documentarians, and "Afropop Worldwide," the long-running public-radio series devoted to the diasporic music of AFRICA and the long, ongoing creative dialogue it inspires in musicians and the music business worldwide.

These and other winners of the 74th annual awards will be presented with their statuettes on Sunday, May 31, at the first-ever nighttime, red-carpet Peabody ceremony. Fred Armisen, a Peabody winner for his work on SATURDAY NIGHT LIVE and his seriesPortlandia, is set to host the gala at Cipriani Wall Street in New York. Pivot TV will use the ceremony as the backbone of a 90 minute Peabody special that it will premiere June 21.

2014 Peabody Award Winners:

THE AMERICANS

In this ingenious, addictive cliffhanger, Reagan-era Soviet spies - married with children and a seemingly endless supply of wigs - operate out of a lovely 3BR home in a suburb of Washington, D.C. Between their nail-biter missions (and sometimes in the midst of them), the series contemplates duty, honor, parental responsibility, fidelity, both nationalistic and marital, and what it means to be an American.

BLACK MIRROR

This cinematically arresting, brilliantly written series from England is an anthology of dark-side tales - dark as a black hole. If its narrative shocks don't wreck your sleep pattern, its moral conundrums will.

FARGO

Fargo, the series, boasts the same snow-swept backdrop and dark, deadpan ambience as the Oscar-winning movie but tells a different, more complicated story. Its villain, Billy Bob Thornton's mischievous, murderous, charismatic Lorne Malvo, is a character worthy of Norse mythology.

THE HONORABLE WOMAN

A visually rich, densely-plotted thriller set against the backdrop of the Israeli-Palestine conflict, it suggests complexities and age-old vendettas that often escape even the best documentaries, to say nothing of the evening news.

INSIDE AMY SCHUMER

Schumer's wholesome, disarming "Brady Bunch" looks belie and enhance a comic intelligence that's smart, distinctively female and amiably profane, whether she's applying it to sketch comedy, stand-up, or person-on-the-street interviews.

JANE THE VIRGIN

Immaculately conceived, it's a smart, self-aware telenovela that knows when and how to wink at itself. Its Latina lead, Gina Rodriguez, is incandescent.

THE KNICK

Graphic, gripping, unapologetically grisly when it has to be, this lavish historical drama masterfully dissects surgical experimentation, doctors' egos, race relations and social mores in the New York City of 100 years ago. It gives new meaning to the term "operating theater."

LAST WEEK TONIGHT WITH JOHN OLIVER

A most worthy addition to the news-as-comedy genre, Last Week Tonight doesn't just satirize the previous week's news, it engages in fresh, feisty investigative reports that "real" news programs would do well to emulate.

RECTIFY

A powerful, subtle dramatic series about a death-row inmate released after nearly two decades thanks to new DNA evidence, it ponders whether what's been lost can ever be repaid, not just to him but to everyone he and his alleged crimes touched.

PERSONAL AWARD: SIR DAVID ATTENBOROUGH

No other living creature has shown us more about life on Earth than David Attenborough. He's a credit to his species.

INSTITUTIONAL AWARD: AFROPOP WORLDWIDE

Afropop Worldwide revels in and reveals the music AFRICA has inspired at home and around the globe. It's cultural anthropology with beats you can dance to.

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