The Emmy opening monologue is a tradition. Not a good tradition but that's never stopped a tradition before.

And as we all know, whenever there's a fun role in Hollywood and a number of terrific candidates capable of filling it, it will default to a mediocre straight white male.

So, here I am.

Welcome to the 71st Primetime Emmy Awards. We're broadcasting live from the Microsoft Theatre in downtown Los Angeles, which is apparently a real thing, and onto the computer screens of bored Australian workers looking for anything to pass a couple of hours on a Monday afternoon.

It might seem strange to you that there's no host tonight but frankly we couldn't trust any potential male host to go the four-month promotion period without getting himself cancelled. And as for giving it to a woman, we decided not to.

Tonight, we will be celebrating the best the television industry has to offer, shows that none of you will actually know because they won't be broadcast to your little continent for another six months at least. But they sound great, so you'll really know what you're missing out on. At this stage, for no reason, I'm going to highly recommend you get a VPN. Moving on!

It is also likely that we'll spend a lot of the show praising Netflix, which has received 30 nominations. This will be an uncomfortable moment for the television industry, akin to praising the knife technique of someone currently stabbing you to death. Which is exactly the kind of tantalising, violent and morally ambiguous scene you'd find on a Netflix original.

Game of Thrones has received a record 36 award nominations this year, marking one statue for every person who actually enjoyed the final series. Personally, I think there was one moment of the final episodes that really did resonate with me. That scene where hundreds of thousands of people gathered with high expectations only to get horribly burned.

It's a huge year for comedies. Barry is up for a nomination for best assassination in a network comedy. But my pick would be Saturday Night Live for the scene where Shane Gillis brutally killed his own career.

The award I'm most excited for is the Outstanding Variety Talk Series. And what a variety! There's The Daily Show with Trevor Noah which talks about Donald Trump daily. Last Week with John Oliver which talks about Mr Trump weekly. The Late Show with Stephen Colbert which talks about Mr Trump late at night. The Late Late Show with James Corden which talks about Trump later in the night. Full Frontal with Samantha Bee for their Trump commentary and Jimmy Kimmel, who reads mean tweets about Mr Trump. It's just a real shame for Jimmy Fallon and Seth Meyers to miss out on a nomination. I hope they find a way to blame Mr Trump.

Julia Louis-Dreyfus is up for Best Comedy Actress and hoping to be finally rewarded for a career of breaking the glass ceiling as often as Fleabag breaks the fourth wall. I'll admit that she's a comedy hero of mine. I'm always impressed at how she can portray a character constantly frustrated at being surrounded by self-serving, incompetent men. How she found inspiration for this over decades in the comedy industry, I'll never know. It's a hotly contested category, too. Natasha Lyonne is nominated for Russian Doll and if she doesn't win, she'll have to relive this ceremony over and over until she does.

Huge year for drama, too. Chernobyl, the story of a horrible disaster, caused by ego and hubris, that threatens the entire world and can be blamed on Russia, somehow found a way to resonate with a contemporary American audience. Then there's Ozark, a series that shows the most frighteningly uncomfortable depiction of Jason Bateman since that New York Times interview where he defended Jeffrey Tambor.

The Best Actress in a Drama category is going to be a cracker, too. My pick is Robin Wright for House of Cards for the way she brilliantly pretended that it wasn't weird to keep the show going after Kevin Spacey's cancellation.

It's going to be a massive night but it's important that we do not lose sight of what's really important: distracting ourselves from the impending heat-death of everyone and everything on the planet for a couple of hours by clapping like seals at the beautiful people being given awards.

Enjoy the show!

James Colley is a comedian and writer for Gruen and The Weekly with Charlie Pickering. He has not been invited to the Emmys and now he never will be.