Another year another Golden Globes ceremony. I'll admit to attempting to stay up but for the entire thing but failing miserably. I wanted to see a lot more of Ricky Gervais, but after his amusing opening monologue, he was pretty much used sporadically at best for the evening. I checked out around 3.30am, and caught up with the rest of the winners then this morning.
Listen, the awards are always boring; a lot of people you don't know thanking people you've never heard of and reaction shots from a bored looking, famous crowd. In a year like 2011 when there was a scattershot, at best, slew of awards worthy productions, most expected George Clooney to win for Best Drama performance and most expected The Artist to pick up gongs in its respective categories. The hook this year was the return of Gervais after the giant media frenzy of last year. Comparatively it was tame, but still very funny. The comedian only came on stage to introduce people he could take the piss out of, basically. He wasn't there purely to emcee, so when the camera cut to the crowd during the event you could see the fear on their faces. This morning twitter and some journalists are saying that they felt he held back this year. But really he couldn’t really win at all, could he? Go for the jugular again and he's getting meaner and there's more of a backlash - do the same thing again and he's stale. I'm sure Gervais expected all of this and the ratings for the show would've been bigger because of his involvement - something NBC knew from the start.
It takes balls to go out on that stage and be yourself - not just read the autocue. Seth Rogen did it and may just be a future presenter, and Ricky Gervais did it again last night. When you see Billy Crystal host the Oscars next month my point will be reinforced. Like it or not Gervais has raised the bar and people expect proper funny now from these things. He has changed the gig for everyone.
See all our Red Carpet Coverage in Sheena's Gossip.