The nominees have been announced for The 66th Annual Golden Globes awards, revealing some surprising choices among the television categories.

In the Best Drama category, only two shows nominated last year, House and Mad Men, again make the cut. They are joined this time out by Showtime's excellent Dexter -- receiving its first nomination in this category -- and two unlikely HBO selections: The well received but not exactly buzzed about In Treatment and Alan Ball's True Blood, which has been a somewhat polarizing series. Many love its story of vampires in Louisiana, while others are highly critical of it – and that's just in the IGN office. Somehow overlooked by all the biggest awards shows, while always garnering the most acclaim, HBO's The Wire failed to be recognized for its final season. Other notable absences are The Shield, Lost and Breaking Bad, along with another constantly overlooked show, Battlestar Galactica.

The nominees for Best Comedy meanwhile are a familiar bunch that have all been nominated in the past: 30 Rock, Californication, Entourage, The Office and Weeds. Last year Pushing Daisies received multiple nominations in the comedy categories, but was shut out from any nominations this year.

Despite winning the Emmy in September for his amazing work in Breaking Bad, Bryan Cranston was not nominated for Best Actor in a Drama at the Golden Globes. In fact this category remains almost exactly as it was for the last Globes, with all the nominated actors from a year ago once more selected, except for Bill Paxton (whose Big Love did not air any new episodes in 2008) being replaced by In Treatment's Gabriel Byrne. There was even more In Treatment love in the supporting categories, as co-stars Melissa George and Diane Wiest face off for supporting actress, while Blair Underwood is also nominated for supporting actor. All told, In Treatment's five nominations are the most for any regular series this year.

In the Best Actress field though, there are some new faces, including Anna Paquin for True Blood and January Jones, getting some well-deserved attention for Mad Men - none of whose wonderful female cast members were nominated for Emmys this year.

Best Actor in a Comedy has the very notable inclusion of Kevin Connolly for Entourage - Jeremy Piven has previously been the only actor to get a lot of awards show notice for the HBO series, and Connolly's presence in this category, as opposed to supporting actor, is especially interesting. Piven is once again nominated in the supporting category. Debra Messing was nominated for Best Actress in a Comedy for her new series The Starter Wife, alongside several returning nominees.

In the mini-series and TV-Movie categories HBO had three notable projects get multiple nominations - John Addams, Recount and Bernard and Doris. Recount in particular stands out, with four different cast members – Kevin Spacey, Denis Leary, Laura Dern and Tom Wilkinson – all nominated.

Also of note in the mini-series/movie categories is the nomination for Kiefer Sutherland for his performance as Jack Bauer in the TV-Movie 24: Redemption. Sutherland has been nominated in the past for playing Bauer, just never in this category, since 24 typically airs as an ongoing series.