The Golden Globe Awards review

As a TV show, Sunday night’s Golden Globe Awards was rather underwhelming, even if most of the winners were spot-on. All those NBC commercials featuring host Ricky Gervais promising to be as meanly sarcastic as he was last year didn’t really pay off. The speeches weren’t all that amusing, except for the one delivered by Sophia Vergara and Steve Levitan from Modern Family. And the awards themselves? Kelsey Grammer in Boss beat out Bryan Cranston in Breaking Bad???

Ricky Gervais made two jokes about NBC, two about the Kardashians, and one about “Jody Foster’s Beaver” — not exactly the stuff of raging controversy. His more aggressive laugh lines missed by being so random, as when he accused presenter Colin Firth of being “racist.” And he downright sucked up to George Clooney. And a “Like a Virgin” joke regarding Madonna? Sheesh.

The Artist was the closest thing to the night’s sweep, which was probably not great news for NBC’s ratings, but who cares about that? Winner Meryl Streep forgot her glasses and had to be bleeped when she realized it. The camera followed the glasses as helpful people including worthy Descendants winner Clooney passed the glasses from table to table toward the stage, only to have the very last person decline to hand them to her — too bad; that clip would be replayed everywhere on Monday morning had that guy David Fincher not spoiled the rare spontaneity.

The Morgan Freeman salute — the Cecil B. DeMille Award — was very nicely done, even as its montage reminded you that he is a great actor who’s had to settle for appearing in an awful lot of mediocre movies. The Globes’ Pia Zadora Memorial Award went to Madonna, scoring for her W.E. and the opportunity to give a puffed-up acceptance speech.

In the movie categories, I gotta say, I thought Moneyball got robbed; of course, I’d also have nominated it in a few more categories than it was, too.

Okay, I can’t resist: Of 11 TV awards, I correctly predicted 9 of them. (Grammer and best-drama-actor Idris Elba were my misses.) Yay, Laura Dern! You so deserved it for Enlightened! Yay, Matt LeBlanc! And yay, Homeland!

Twitter: @kentucker