Netflix Set For Grand Golden Globes Showing

Netflix took the Golden Globes nominations title with eight, one better than HBO’s seven, and seeks to convert that into the most trophies in Beverly Hills Sunday night.

Starz was next with six nominations and Amazon Prime Video and FX with five, then ABC, Fox and PBS at four.

Netflix will seek to reverse a rough Emmys in September, when the streaming service went home from the Microsoft Theatre in downtown Los Angeles with just one trophy while watching HBO claim 14.

Ricky Gervais hosts the festivities from the Beverly Hilton, and promises a typically tart-tongued performance. He tweeted early Sunday, without the asterisks, “Better get dressed and offend some humourless c***s I suppose,” along with a grim photo of him waking up.

Best drama is between Fox’s Empire, HBO’s Game of Thrones, USA Network’s Mr. Robot, Netflix’s Narcos and Starz’s Outlander. Speaking of Narcos, word of Sean Penn interviewing fugitive drug lord “El Chapo” should provide Gervais with plenty of timely Hollywood material.

Among other key categories, best performance by an actress in a drama is between Caitriona Balfe  of Outlander, Eva Green of Penny Dreadful, Taraji P. Henson of Empire and Robin Wright of House of Cards.

Best performance by an actor in a drama is a jump-ball between Jon Hamm of Mad Men, Rami Malek of Mr. Robot, Wagner Moura of Narcos, Bob Odenkirk of Better Call Saul and Ray Donovan lead Liev Schrieber.

Best comedy pits Hulu’s Casual, Amazon’s Mozart in the Jungle and Transparent, Netflix’s Orange is the New Black, and HBO’s Silicon Valley and HBO’s Veep against one another.

Best performance by an actress in a comedy features a pair of CW stars—Rachel Bloom of Crazy Ex Girlfriend and Gina Rodriguez of Jane the Virgin, along with Jamie Lee Curtis of Scream Queens, Julia Louis-Dreyfus of Veep and Lily Tomlin of Grace and Frankie.

Among comic actors, it’s Aziz Ansari of Master of None, Gael Garcia Bernal of Mozart in the Jungle, Rob Lowe in The Grinder, Patrick Stewart in Blunt Talk and Jeffrey Tambor in Transparent.

The broadcast nets have had a tough time of it at the major awards events of late—at the Emmys, ABC picked up a pair while NBC and CBS had one—but are better represented in terms of Globes nominations.

NBC airs the event.

Michael Malone

Michael Malone, senior content producer at B+C/Multichannel News, covers network programming, including entertainment, news and sports on broadcast, cable and streaming; and local broadcast television. He hosts the podcasts Busted Pilot, about what’s new in television, and Series Business, a chat with the creator of a new program, and writes the column “The Watchman.” He joined B+C in 2005. His journalism has also appeared in The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Playboy and New York magazine.