📺Movies for Grownups Awards with AARP the Magazine 2026 (PBS Great Performances)

Ceremony hosted by Alan Cumming, 61,
 Sunday, February 22, 2026

 Celebrating shows and movies for people over 50
 Adam Sandler receives the Career Achievement Award

"This was a fantastic year for entertainment by and for people age 50 and up — the people we call “grownups.” Nearly half of the most recent acting Emmys went to older actors, and nine of the 20 nominees for acting at the 2025 Oscars were over 50 too
 Here are nominees for the year’s TV projects featuring older performers and directors

The winners will be honored at the annual
Movies for Grownups Awards at the
Beverly Wilshire, A Four Seasons Hotel, on January 10, 2026
 and the ceremony will première on Great Performances on PBS on February 22, 2026
Tune in to discover the TV winners in these and other categories

Television Nominations:

Adolescence Stephen Graham’s Emmy-​festooned series about a family being turned upside down when their 13-year-old son is arrested for killing a classmate remains a devastating and nuanced meditation on every parent’s worst nightmare.

Hacks Jean Smart, 74, keeps her hit show fresh by delving even deeper into her stand-up-comic character’s intergenerational love-hate relationship with her protégée (Hannah Einbinder).

The Pitt ER star Noah Wyle, 54, slipped back into his scrubs and single-handedly revived the small-screen medical procedural, thanks to this tick-tock about the chaos and crises at a Pittsburgh hospital.

The Studio Seth Rogen’s hilariously barbed satire of Hollywood’s dream factory juggles inside-baseball jokes, terrific A-list cameos and craven movie studio politics, and turns it all into a bone-dry martini of a series.

The White Lotus When is paradise not paradise? When it springs from the mind of Lotus creator Mike White, 55. The latest season (set in Thailand) was one of the year’s most buzzworthy watercooler shows for a reason.

Best Actor, Television

Walton Goggins, 54, The White Lotus

With his wolfish smirk, tropical-print shirts and self-destructive vendetta, Goggins guided the most recent season of this delirious dark comedy into a must-watch phenomenon.

Stephen Graham, 52, Adolescence

The British acting veteran has finally become a bona fide star on this side of the Atlantic with this harrowing family drama that examines sin, redemption and an almost biblical level of tragedy.

Gary Oldman, 67, Slow Horses 

Oldman’s performance is a ferocious tour de force in this stunningly matter-of-fact espionage series, which couldn’t be further away from the glitz and glamour of James Bond.

Pedro Pascal, 50, The Last of Us

Pascal may have been the busiest man in Hollywood this past year, but for our money, his greatest achievement was his turn in this haunting postapocalyptic survival saga.

Noah Wyle, 54, The Pitt

The ER vet is back in scrubs, which means all hell is about to break loose. His stressed-out physician, Dr. Michael “Robby” Robinavitch, desperately tries to balance compassion and cynicism without losing his carefully composed armor of cool.

Best Actress, Television

Kathy Bates, 77, Matlock
In a role that couldn’t be more of a bespoke fit, Bates not only gives a hypnotic, whip-smart performance as a crusading lawyer; she makes you forget there was ever another attorney who shared her last name.

Kathryn Hahn, 52, The Studio
Hahn is a master of smarter-than-you sarcasm. And she puts that talent to work (and then some) as a soulless, BS-slinging marketing exec in Seth Rogen’s blistering parody of 21st-century Hollywood.

Catherine O’Hara, 71, The Studio
A true ensemble show, The Studio carves out at least a half dozen roles that would be the lead on any other series. The scene-stealing Emmy- and Golden Globe–winning O’Hara shines as an exec on the way out who slowly realizes that without power, there isn’t much there there.

Parker Posey, 57, The White Lotus
Posey’s chewy Southern accent was the subject of countless memes this year. But let’s not forget all the other shades she brought to her pill-popping, diva-like matriarch: She contains multitudes. 

Jean Smart, 74, Hacks
What’s left to say about Smart’s career-defining run as Deborah Vance on Hacks? No one wears the twin masks of comedy and tragedy better"