Monday<\/p>\n
The truest thing ever said about the Golden Globes<\/a> was by Tina Fey when she hosted the awards in 2019 and described the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, a group of junket hacks, as operating out of the \u201cback booth of a French McDonalds\u201d. The HFPA was disbanded in 2023 after allegations of racism, but 95 former members retained voting rights and on Monday, the show went on.<\/p>\n And what a year it was for the second Penske Media Golden Globe awards, featuring not only a commercial tie-in with the betting tool Polymarket (\u201cintegrated branding and real-time market insights designed to enhance audience engagement\u201d) but a new category for poor-relation-to-the-screen, best podcast. Against stiff competition from Alex Cooper\u2019s Call Her Daddy and The Mel Robbins Podcast, the award went to Amy Poehler\u2019s Good Hang, a show in which she yuks it up with her friends to remind us how important Tina Fey was in their partnership.<\/p>\n In the TV awards, meanwhile, there was well-earned recognition for the actor and thought leader Stephen Graham, for Adolescence, his Netflix show exploring the complexities of men\u2019s rights, and I was happy HBO\u2019s The Pitt won best drama, even though you still need a VPN to watch it in Britain. (I was also happy Michelle Williams won for Dying for Sex, a hugely under-rated FX show that wasn\u2019t helped by its terrible title.)<\/p>\n One thing that struck me as the camera swept over the audience during standup comedian Nikki Glaser\u2019s affable opening monologue: is there any circumstance on Earth that would make these people skip this thing entirely? The HFPA was a joke, the awards then and now are a joke, but short of some kind of Pompeii-like event reducing nominees on the red carpet to ash, we have to assume they\u2019ll keep turning up in their finery. I know, I know; it\u2019s about the work.<\/p>\n Tuesday<\/p>\n A low-key flex in New York used to be to say you saw Hamilton when it was on at the Public (I didn\u2019t see it at the Public). The newest version of this is to claim you saw Oh, Mary!, the hit Broadway show that recently transferred to London, when it opened downtown at the Lucille Lortel theatre. (I didn\u2019t see it at the Lucille Lortel. In fact, I don\u2019t think I\u2019ve ever seen anything before everyone else saw it and told me to go.)<\/p>\n I did, however, see Oh, Mary! this week at the Trafalgar theatre in the West End and it made me so happy I got off the tube at the wrong stop on the way home. Cole Escola\u2019s starring role as a depressed, alcoholic, former cabaret star, Mary Todd Lincoln, is reprised by Mason Alexander Park and any concern that we\u2019d missed the only version worth seeing evaporates in the first five minutes.<\/p>\n Not everyone feels this way. Escola tells the story of hapless folk from New Jersey showing up to the Broadway production anticipating a sombre engagement with American history rather than a series of jokes about Abraham Lincoln being gay, and huffing out after five minutes. I don\u2019t know if that has happened in London yet.<\/p>\n But while the show here is sold out, there\u2019s no question Oh, Mary! hasn\u2019t had the same impact that it had in New York, partly, perhaps, because the American history part is off-putting and partly because London, in my view, is a much straighter town. I have heard more than one puzzled or disapproving reaction from Londoners who might have been happier at the Michael Jackson musical or Wicked. On which score I feel towards Oh, Mary! a certain combative protectiveness that makes me think if you didn\u2019t like it, it wasn\u2019t for you in the first place.<\/p>\n Nigel Farage: \u2018Look, I can\u2019t be a vampire, I\u2019ve got a shadow.\u2019 Photograph: Murdo MacLeod\/The GuardianWednesday<\/p>\n If it\u2019s risible to show up at the Golden Globes, how do you like AARP\u2019s Movies for Grownups awards featuring \u2013 no stage too obscure, no appearance too lowly as long as there are cameras to record it \u2013 the former leading man George Clooney. It\u2019s quite the turn up, isn\u2019t it, that Noah Wyle, ever the bridesmaid on ER back in the day, has leapt over Clooney with his role in The Pitt, while Clooney is reduced to moping about in ponderous films by Greta Gerwig\u2019s sad-looking husband, Noah Baumbach.<\/p>\n