When the Golden Globes nominations were announced at the end of 2019, Netflix celebrated 34 nominations across a host of categories. They were sure to dominate the event and when Ricky Gervais gave his opening speech at the ceremony, he joked that they may as well skip the whole ceremony and give all the awards to Netflix there and then. As the ceremony unfolded, however, it became clear that things were not going to go down as expected.
Despite receiving a record-breaking number of nominations, Netflix walked away with just two wins on the big night. One of these was for Best Actress, which naturally went to Olivia Coleman for her stunning performance in The Crown. The second was awarded to Laura Dern, who took home Best Supporting Actress for her role in Marriage Story.
So what exactly went wrong? It hardly comes down to a lack of quality content. For starters, Netflix had Martin Scorsese directing the critically acclaimed Irishman. In spite of the film’s popularity, it took home no awards on the night. Instead, the likes of Joker and Once Upon A Time In Hollywood took home the prestigious film awards of the night.
Others have argued that it comes down to the fact that streaming services do not typically do well on award night. There may be some truth in this, although HBO’s Chernobyl won in multiple categories, Amazon Prime Video’s Fleabag was once again heavily praised and even Hulu picked up two awards despite having significantly less original content and nominations than Netflix.
Ultimately, it more likely comes down to the fact that although Netflix has lots of great content, it has limited exceptional content. The movies on the platform are not quite up to the standard of blockbusters and when it comes to original Netflix shows, there has been a recent shift from quality to quantity. Netflix can take pride in being the only streaming platform to take home an award in a film category but overall, the Golden Globes was a big disappointment for Netflix. The only question now is whether the disappointment will carry over into the Oscars.
