Critics’ Choice TV Awards 2015: Will Thomas Middleditch, Chris Messina, Jeffrey Tambor win Comedy actor?

Yesterday, we started up our series of spotlights all about the Critics’ Choice TV Awards, which is one of our favorite award shows out there, given that we do tend for the most part find the nominees here to be interesting and a true spectrum of what is going on across TV. Sometimes with the Emmys we tend to find a lot of populism, and shows with smaller audiences being lost in the shuffle.

Even though there are some familiar names and faces in the Best Actor in a Comedy Series category, some of the names below are fairly new to the process and could make for interesting winners when this ceremony is held on May 31. We’re going to share with you below our picks, and hopefully a few names you should be on the watch for.

The nominees

Thomas Middleditch, “Silicon Valley” (HBO)

Jeffrey Tambor, “Transparent” (Amazon)

Chris Messina, “The Mindy Project” (Fox, at least it was during season 3)

Johnny Galecki, “The Big Bang Theory” (CBS)

Anthony Anderson, “black-ish” (ABC)

Will Forte, “The Last Man on Earth” (Fox)

Who should win – Let’s start by saying how happy we are for Anderson, a guy who has starred in quite a few shows over the years that have not utilized his talents in the way that they should. Unfortunately, he probably has little change here. Forte or Middleditch would be a fun winner, but we feel like Tambor tackled such a meaty role with grace and humor, and we cannot make a case against him. Outstanding work, and another item on a stellar resume.

Who will win – Tambor may not have it on lock, but we feel like our pick and the pick of the voters will align here. A solid runner-up choice would be Messina, given the popularity of “The Mindy Project” among critics. We’d love to see Forte get a ton of votes here, as well, and he may be helped by “Last Man on Earth” airing recently on Fox.