Better Call Saul was robbed: the biggest Golden Globes snubs and surprises

Perhaps fittingly, given that the Golden Globes themselves were desperate to rally from a steep fall from grace, they went down the road this year of singling out the comeback kids. Here were a heap of one-off chances to recognise career achievement and give under-rewarded stars – Jennifer Coolidge! – their moment in the sun. Indeed, among the six actors who won Globes for their film work this year, only Cate Blanchett (Tár), whose fourth this was, truly counts as an awards-circuit veteran.

Here are the highs and lows – both film and TV – from the night's ceremony.

The good

Everything Everywhere’s actors win everything

Because she’s filming a thriller called Disclaimer in the UK, Blanchett didn’t show up. But this only allowed the stars of Everything Everywhere All at Once to shine all the brighter when their names were called. Michelle Yeoh and Ke Huy Quan owned the night with emotional outpourings about their long roads to fame and acclaim.

Especially in Quan’s case, it was one with huge stretches of total obscurity. Scooping the night’s first award, he gave a shout-out to Steven Spielberg, who discovered him in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, in which he gave one of the great child performances. Elegantly enough, Spielberg himself stole the back end of the evening, pipping heavy competition to take Best Director and Best Drama for his own film about childhood, The Fabelmans, the first of his pictures (in his own estimation) to be truly honest on the subject.

House of the Dragon torched Severance

House Targaryen took the big one - Best Drama Series (previous winners - Mad Men, Breaking Bad, The Sopranos, Succession) - something parent series Game of Thrones never achieved. The first series of the prequel spinoff was excellent, totally surpassing the lowest of low expectations, and deserved to win over The Crown (why on earth was that nominated?), Ozark and the overrated Severance. Better Call Saul, of course, can feel aggrieved (see below).

Angela Bassett forever

Yeoh and Quan’s co-star, the hilarious Jamie Lee Curtis, may have hoped she’d pick up her first Globe since 1995, when the HFPA gave her Comedy Actress for James Cameron’s True Lies. Thanks in part to her TV work, she’s a perennial nominee – eight times – who has never once got an Oscar nomination, and is giving it quite the push.

But Angela Bassett’s regal fire as the bereaved queen in Black Panther: Wakanda Forever was impossible for the voting body to get past – perhaps with half a mind, given the heavy criticism they’ve faced for a lack of diversity in their membership, on what it would have looked like to snub all three Black nominees: The Woman King’s Viola Davis lost to Blanchett, and Jeremy Pope was never going to win for The Inspection.

Bassett’s an Oscar front-runner now. When she first emerged as a leading lady, I doubt anyone would have guessed it would take a Marvel sequel – and not even a particularly acclaimed one – to get her in the winners’ club, but sometimes it’s just your turn, and getting to grieve and die in the same part was the clincher.

The brawny, beefy Kevin Costner

Yes, Mr Waterworld is now a three times Golden Globes winner, with the Hollywood Foreign Press Association seemingly unable to resist whenever he pops on a metaphorical Stetson (he won previously for qausi-Westerns Dances with Wolves and Hatfields & McCoys). America cannot resist the brawny, beefy world of Yellowstone, with its rough justice, wholesome vistas and lingering shots of succulent cattle. Costner’s turn as patriarch John Dutton III – essentially a bison in human form – isn’t subtle, but it is effective. Bob Odenkirk, of course, can feel aggrieved (see below).

The White Lotus and Jennifer Coolidge bloom at last

The Globes tends to favour broad, big-hearted, people-pleasing stuff, rather than spiky, cynical, jet-black sex comedies which hollow out the already hollow lives of America’s 1 per cent. And if Kevin Costner was born to play a human bison, Jennifer Coolidge was born to play Tanya McQuiod, the sozzled, sidelined socialite tottering through life on six-inch heels to her inevitable doom.

It's clearly Colin Farrell’s year

It now looks like a three-way battle for the Best Actor Oscar is on the cards. But The Whale, which many dislike, is a fading threat, Butler is brand new, and Colin Farrell (The Banshees of Inisherin) is the one with the premium narrative behind him: a career in which he’s turned corners to impress and surprise quite regularly, and is finally gaining respect for a whole body of work.

He won the same Globe (Best Comedy Actor) for In Bruges in 2008, but was Oscar-snubbed; there’s no way it’s going to happen again. Beyond them, we’re looking at Yeoh vs Blanchett, Quan a near dead cert, Bassett looking suddenly tough to dethrone. And if it’s not ultimately Spielberg’s year – his box office is measly – either the wild popularity of Everything Everywhere… or the boutique poignancy of Banshees look poised to go the distance.

The bad

The Brendan Fraser boycott

Many assumed it was Brendan Fraser’s turn to clean up this year, when The Whale premiered at Venice to a six-minute standing ovation. But the Globes, despite never nominating him before, have a tricky history with Fraser: he has accused the former president, Philip Berk, of groping him at a luncheon in 2003, and therefore boycotted the event this year. They boycotted him back, bucking the comeback trend and giving Best Actor (Drama) instead to the newcomer, Austin Butler for Elvis. That certainly avoided an awkward speech from whoever would have had to accept on Fraser’s behalf.

Where were the Brits?

Plenty of nominations, not a single win in the TV categories for the United Kingdom - it all felt very Eurovision. Emma D’Arcy surely deserved Best Actress in a Drama for House of the Dragon, while Jonathan Pryce’s Duke of Edinburgh was the head and shoulders the best thing about last year’s duff series of The Crown. Lily James, Taron Egerton, Colin Firth, Andrew Garfield, Daisy Edgar-Jones - all snubbed. The British are coming - home. Empty-handed.

Atlanta snubbed

Donald and Stephen Glover’s sensational surrealist take on race in America was never going to win Best TV Series - Musical or Comedy, because, criminally, its final seasons hadn’t even been nominated (Wednesday? Better than Atlanta? Really?). It’s hard to sniff at Jeremy Allen White’s manic-bravura performance as a frazzled chef in The Bear, but Glover should really have taken Best Actor in a Comedy or Musical. The Bear is an excellent show. Atlanta is era-defining.

And the baffling

Better Call Saul snubbed too

That’s six series, six Golden Globes nominations and zero wins for the critically adored Breaking Bad spinoff (to go with 23 Primetime Emmy nominations and zero wins - though Saul has one last bite at the Emmy cherry in September). The show missed out on Best Drama to House of the Dragon, while - less forgivably - Bob Odenkirk lost out to Kevin Costner for Best Actor in a Drama. Poor old Slippin’ Jimmy, overlooked as always.

Abbott what?

Perhaps not baffling to those in the States, but Quinta Brunson’s dewy-eyed, school-based mockumentary has yet to make a splash here. And, likely, it never will. It’s a peculiarly American confection, with its heart worn on its sleeve, trouser legs and hat. Expect it to clean up at the Globes for years to come.

A quiet night for All Quiet On the Western Front

Momentum is building for All Quiet on the Western Front – the big-budget, German-made, technically impressive Netflix retelling of Erich Maria Remarque’s great WWI novel – to come out on top at the Oscars in this category, and possibly even to snag a Best Picture nomination, almost a century after Lewis Milestone’s version won in 1930.

Edward Berger’s film just took a hit by losing at the Globes, though, and not even to RRR, the go-for-broke Indian blockbuster which has been even more acclaimed (and managed to win Best Song).

Instead, up came Argentina, 1985 to steal this laurel – meaning this politically commemorative courtroom drama could be a spoiler on Oscar night, too. Santiago Mitre’s film recreates the Trial of the Juntas, in which the country’s military leadership were called to account for their role in state terrorism and forced disappearances, with Argentina’s biggest film star, Ricardo Darín, ruling the show as chief prosecutor Julio César Strassera.

Neither anywhere near as fun as RRR nor as harrowing as AQOTWF, though very nearly as long, it’s the sturdy, talky, middlebrow bet, borrowing much from Aaron Sorkin’s playbook. At least this upset keeps the race from feeling pre-ordained.