“One Ignore Looms Above All Others” – The Biggest Losers at the Golden Globes TV Awards | television

TLooking just at the winners, last night’s Golden Globes went exactly as expected. Adolescence invaded the painting, because of course it did, for all the reasons you know it by heart now. The studio was similarly successful, on the grounds that it was simultaneously funny about the entertainment industry and one of the episodes was about the Golden Globes. All deserving winners.

But when you look into the nominations, things become less clear. The white lotus entered the ceremony with six gestures, and left empty-handed. Five of those nominations were grouped into just two categories – Best Supporting Actor and Best Supporting Actress – meaning the maximum awards it could have won was three. But, still, coming up with nothing isn’t great.

There are several possible reasons for this. The first is that now that the show is an ongoing concern with a fourth season already in production, it no longer qualifies as a limited series. Instead, every nomination The White Lotus received this year was in the drama series genre, which is a tougher place to break into.

But also, in terms of quality, this was the weakest season of The White Lotus ever. The scripting was particularly off, with plots overstaying their welcome (the heist) or disappearing without resolution (that weird scene between Leslie Bibb and Parker Posey). Also, you get the feeling that this is the year the on-screen drama outshines the show itself. The thought of a fleet of isolated actors losing their minds in the tropical heat was far more fascinating than anything their characters had done.

Likewise, Severance was probably expecting a much better night. The series was nominated for Best Drama, Best Actor, Best Actress, and Best Supporting Actor, and also benefited from being a critical darling. Some things were quite as predictable as Severance’s second season, but then there were few things quite as disappointing as it. What started life as a biting piece of social commentary — surely we all hate work so much that we want to turn off our brains during work hours — devolved into screensaver territory, as it tried to cover up its lack of momentum with needlessly garish direction.

In terms of surprises, you could say that Jean Smart was lucky to take home another award for Hacks, since the show gave us its least enjoyable season yet. There was always a question about how great Smart’s character Deborah Vance was, but this season’s late-night talk show format gave her no place to hide. As such, the entire season was a lot of people telling Vance she was great, and then Vance being unfunny in return. Not even an actor of Smart’s quality could sell that.

However, given that Smart’s rivals included Ayo Edebiri, Natasha Lyonne, and Jenna Ortega — all of whom star in shows that aren’t really comedies — her victory was perhaps inevitable. In fact, let’s blame the Golden Globes themselves for this one. Maybe this whole mess could have been avoided if it had broadened its outlook on shows that prioritize comedy over everything else.

However, there is one snub that looms above all the others this year. And if you’re reading this in the UK, that’s you. The Pitt won two awards last night – Best Drama and Best Actor – just as it won almost every other award. The show could add this award to its five Emmys, four Television Critics Association Awards and three Astra TV Awards.

The show was such a massive success that it literally changed the way television was made. Last March, HBO Max CEO Casey Bloys happily pointed out how quick and cheap it was to make compared to big, lumbering monsters like House of the Dragon, and suggested it was a model he’d like to replicate.

So, from any angle, The Pitt is an absolute juggernaut of the series. Except none of us know, because it’s not available to watch in the UK. Even though Season 2 of The Pitt is already showing in the US and pretty much the rest of the world, we’re left out in the wild. Obviously we might get it in March, when HBO Max gets here, but that seems like too long to take away from the most exciting offering right now. As such, if there was one loser coming out of last night, it was definitely us.