'Breaking Bad', 'Homeland' Compete With Euro Stars at Monte Carlo TV Festival

It's the ultimate international small screen showdown: Homeland's Carrie Mathison vs. Sarah Lund of The Killing; Walter White and his Breaking Bad meth cooking skills up against the interstellar science of Doctor Who.

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The Monte Carlo Television Festival has unveiled its 2013 nominees and they are a binge watchers dream. In the Drama TV category, AMC's Breaking Bad and Showtime's Homeland will compete against the best in international series, including Denmark's The Killing and political drama Borgen; British favorites Doctor Who and Downton Abbey; Canadian WWII serial Bomb Girls and a smattering of lesser-known local hits including Mexican prison drama Capadocia; Belgian procedural Vermist; RTE's Love/Hate about the organized crime scene in Dublin; Japanese drama First Love (Hatsukoi) and The Blue Rose, an office sitcom meets investigative drama mash up from New Zealand. 

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The Comedy Series category is similarly rich this year, featuring U.S. sitcoms Modern Family and 30 Rock alongside BBC's long-running sci-fi laffer Red Dwarf, Channel Four's Fresh Meat and hit Australian comedy Lowdown, about a hapless newspaper journalist in Sydney. Other sitcoms in the running this year include the dark Belgian comedy Crimi Clowns, which follows a group of circus performers who moonlight as second story men; French shows Lazy Company and Don't Do This, Don't Do That; Germany's Die Kirche Bleibt im Dorf from public broadcaster SWR and the Quebecois comedy Les Parents, a gag-heavy family sitcom now in its fifth season.

The line up for Monte Carlo's Audience Awards, as expected, are more mainstream, with global hits in both the drama category -  CSI: Miami, House and The Mentalist - and in comedy with Two and A Half Men, The Big Bang Theory and British slapstick evergreen Mr. Bean. Monte Carlo also has a separate audience category for soaps and telenovelas with this year's nominees including CBS' The Bold and The Beautiful, Telemundo's La Casa de al Lado and the hit Venezuelan telenovela Eva Luna. 

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The Monte Carlo festival, running this year June 9-13, also awards its coveted Golden Nymph honor for excellence in TV movies, mini-series, documentaries and news programming.

You can find a full list of 2013 Monte Carlo nominees here.