The main takeaway from last night’s Golden Globes, as I’m sure many of you will have noticed, is that the Guardian is right about everything. Just a few weeks ago, we crowned The Bear our best show of 2023, and last night the show won Golden Globes for best television series (musical or comedy), best performance by a female actor in a television series (musical or comedy) and best performance by a male actor in a television series.
Meanwhile, our No 2 show, Succession, swept the board in drama, winning best television series, best female actor, best male actor and best male actor in a supporting role. And more or less every award in the limited series categories went to our No 4 show, Beef. So there are two lessons here. The first, clearly, is that you mess with us at your peril.
The second, which is a little trickier, is that I’m screwed. This is supposed to be a “snubs and surprises” reaction piece, which is almost impossible to do when everyone you wanted and expected to win a Golden Globe actually won.
Almost. But to do it, it does mean rooting for the winners. The three awards won by The Bear were all completely deserved, but this last season was held together by one man. Although he was primarily the lunk-headed aggressor in The Bear’s debut season, Ebon Moss-Bachrach’s Richie became the beating heart of the entire enterprise in its second. No character on television had a more transformative arc than Richie, and no moment was as thrillingly heartwarming as the one in the episode Forks where Richie – speeding in his car, fighting back tears and bellowing along to Taylor Swift – finally discovered his long-dormant sense of purpose.
Moss-Bachrach is one of the greatest actors on Earth, and this year he was finally given the storyline of a lifetime. He was beaten by Matthew Macfadyen, who in many ways was a deserving winner, but his performance crackled with so much electricity that it was incredibly sad to see him leave empty-handed.
The same goes for Natasha Lyonne. Ayo Edebiri won the Golden Globe, quite rightly, for her revelatory performance in The Bear. But her win meant denying Lyonne, who pulled off an incredible feat on Poker Face. The nature of Poker Face meant that she was usually the only connective tissue between episodes, and as such her performance required her to will a centre of gravity from almost nothing. Lyonne wore Poker Face like a second skin. It’s the perfect role for her. I realise that it isn’t the job of an awards ceremony to lob multiple awards at all the nominees, but this year’s television has been so incredible that maybe there should have been an exception.
There is one show that did deserve some recognition. Fargo left without a single award last night and it deserved more. Part of the reason for this, I think, is that it is a continuing concern – there are still two more episodes to go in the current season, which means that a lot of voters (and I) hadn’t seen it when we were making our choices.
That is a shame, because it has been one of the punchiest, most streamlined iterations of Fargo there has ever been. The storyline, which revolves around domestic abuse, has forced the show to drop its habit of being altogether too arch about everything and it has been much more powerful as a result. What’s more, Jon Hamm has been playing out of his skin, as a sheriff who has grown darker and darker with each successive episode. His character is a villain for the ages, and it is the best Hamm has been in anything since Mad Men. Juno Temple has been similarly incredible. Fargo was edged out in all categories by Beef (which is great! Beef was my favourite show of the year) but I desperately wanted Fargo to win something, too.
All of which makes for an upsettingly unconventional snubs and surprises article, I know. I agree that all the winners should have won, but I also wanted a lot of the other nominees to win as well. If the next 12 months produces television as brilliant as the last year, let’s petition the Golden Globes to just blast loads of awards into the audience with a T-shirt cannon, so that everyone gets their glory.
