Australia came away empty-handed, Emilia Pérez was the surprise hit, and Wicked, the biggest film of the year, failed to cast a strong spell over this year’s Golden Globes. Nobody honestly thought it would defy gravity, but that it came up so short was still a shock.

Wicked’s Ariana Grande on the Golden Globes red carpet.Credit: AP

The 82nd annual Golden Globes got it mostly right with wins for Jean Smart, Demi Moore, Kieran Culkin and Hiroyuki Sanada. Nicole Kidman should have won for Babygirl, but against Pamela Anderson (The Last Showgirl) and Angelina Jolie (Maria), she was in what everyone assumed was the night’s toughest category. (Fernanda Torres won.)

But first, what happened to Wicked? The biggest movie musical in recent memory went in with four nominations: motion picture musical or comedy, female actor (for Cynthia Erivo), supporting female actor (for Ariana Grande) and cinematic and box office achievement, which recognises – as the title suggests – the fact that a film made an enormous amount of money.

In the end, Wicked walked away with only the last of the four, a largely industry-facing award intended to soothe the bruised ego of blockbusters which lose out to critical darlings at events like the Golden Globes. Erivo lost to Demi Moore. Grande lost to Zoe Saldaña. And Wicked itself lost to Emilia Pérez.

What makes it a more complex equation is the fact that the night’s big winners were genuinely deserving: the brilliant Jean Smart for Hacks, director Brady Corbet for Oscar best picture contender The Brutalist, the astoundingly good Kieran Culkin for A Real Pain and Sebastian Stan, who delivered an extraordinary performance in A Different Man.

Golden Globe winner Jean Smart.Credit: Getty Images

It is a sign, perhaps, that the fatter voting body for the awards (300-plus voters, up from fewer than 90 a few years ago) is now returning a result more reflective, in the movie categories at least, of the Academy Award winners the night is intended to predict.

Jean Smart’s win seemed acutely resonant. “I never thought I’d be so happy to be called a hack,” the Hacks star said. Smart, 73, is the poster girl for one of Hollywood’s most poorly treated demographics. To see the audience applaud her excellence was one of the great pleasures of the night.

It was also a night to celebrate “the best of film and to hold space for television”, said host Nikki Glaser, in a joke which was not intended to turn an uncomfortable spotlight on the fact that most of the TV winners – Hacks, The Bear, Shōgun – were on the tail end of longer winning streaks, but did.

© The Sydney Morning Herald