As any TV critic who moonlights as an Emmy observer will tell you, the Television Academy’s choices can be… frustrating. The tendency to nominate the same series and performances year in, year out; the reluctance to acknowledge certain challenging titles; the labyrinthine rules: The Emmys are often easy to predict, yet difficult to understand.

With that in mind, my annual mock Emmy nominations ballot is a plea for voters’ consideration, a paean to the medium’s finest and an attempt to highlight those still flying under the radar as voting gets underway. It’s full of tough decisions and merciless cuts—including a few that may have you scratching your head. It’s not predictive, but aspirational. And it’s written in the hope that it might get even a single voter to give a deserving series or performer another look.

Outstanding Limited Series

Alias Grace (Netflix)
The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (FX)
Howards End (Starz)
The Looming Tower (Hulu)
Twin Peaks: The Return (Showtime)

It’s been a strong year for limited series. As I’ve written for the site more than once, The Assassination of Gianni Versace is a remarkably radical treatment of queer themes, unspooling in reverse chronological order across multiple genres and painted in Miami pastels. Alias Grace is equally ambitious, in terms of both structure (toggling between two timelines) and perspective (that of an accused murderer); Twin Peaks, meanwhile, is so wildly imagistic, and yet so primal, that the eminences at Sight & Sound and Cahiers du Cinéma decided its excellence made it a film. (It’s a TV series. Always has been.) Even the category’s less groundbreaking entries, Howards End and The Looming Tower, are formidable iterations of familiar stories—an embarrassment of riches, indeed.

Outstanding Lead Actor (Limited Series/TV Movie)

Darren Criss, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (FX)
Jared Harris, The Terror (AMC)
Michael B. Jordan, Fahrenheit 451 (HBO)
Matthew Macfadyen, Howards End (Starz)
Kyle MacLachlan, Twin Peaks: The Return (Showtime)
Jimmy Tatro, American Vandal (Netflix)

So, here is where I come across a familiar Emmy dilemma. Criss does career-making work in The Assassination of Gianni Versace, transforming spree killer Andrew Cunanan into a gruesomely magnetic villain/protagonist, and in any other year I’d say you were out of your gourd not to give him the trophy. But MacLachlan does career-defining work as Twin Peaks’ Dale Cooper, earning Emmy nominations for the series’ first two seasons in 1990-1991, to which he adds both Coop’s doppelganger and Dougie Jones in last year’s revival. Criss will have more bites at the apple. I say give MacLachlan the award he’s deserved for almost three decades.

Outstanding Supporting Actor (Limited Series/TV Movie)

Miguel Ferrer, Twin Peaks: The Return (Showtime)
Ciarán Hinds, The Terror (AMC)
Alex Lawther, Howards End (Starz)
Tahar Rahim, The Looming Tower (Hulu)
Edgar Ramirez, The Assassination of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (FX)
Hugo Weaving, Patrick Melrose (Showtime)

In the interest of spreading the love, I left out two performances of note: Cody Fern and Finn Witrock, as murder victims—and, crucially, men in full—David Madson and Jeff Trail, in The Assassination of Gianni Versace. If you’ll forgive me that, then please consider Alex Lawther, an exquisitely funny, never ridiculous revelation as Tibby Schlegel, breathing life into a character that not even E.M. Forster could.

Outstanding Supporting Actress (Limited Series/TV Movie)

Penelope Cruz, The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (FX)
Laura Dern, Twin Peaks: The Return (Showtime)
Angela Lansbury, Little Women (PBS)
Judith Light, The Assassination Of Gianni Versace: American Crime Story (FX)
Anna Paquin, Alias Grace (Netflix)
Tracey Ullmann, Howards End (Starz)

If you expected me to pick anyone but 92-year-old Angela Lansbury as Little Women’s Aunt March, you had another thing coming.

Emmys 2018: Paste’s (Unofficial) Nominations Ballot