By now, you’ll have probably seen all the highlights of the 82nd Golden Globes, from Nikki Glazer’s Ozempic-flavored roasts to the internet’s most talked about celebrity PDA moments – but what can we, as writers, take from awards season long after the ceremony ends?
Here, I’ll be breaking down what the award nominations and wins mean for current trends in TV writing and how we can use them to gain a better understanding of what kinds of stories the industry is responding to.
MISSED THE BIG NIGHT? HERE’S A RUNDOWN OF THE WINNERS:
- Shōgun, the beloved Japanese epic from Disney, Hulu, and FX, reigned supreme, bagging a total of four awards across the television categories, including Best Drama Series.
- Previous Golden Globes’ favorites The Bear and Abbott Elementary were snubbed in this year’s Best Musical or Comedy Series category in favor of Amazon’s Hacks, a heartwarmingly funny story of an unlikely intergenerational friendship.
- In the Best Miniseries or TV Film category, Richard Gadd’s Edinburgh Fringe show turned Netflix knockout Baby Reindeer took it home.
With the rise of streamers in recent years, awards shows have become more and more about which platforms are on top, and less about the shows themselves. The Globes even went so far as to have a studio scoreboard up on the wall ranking which platforms were winning the most awards in real-time.
Overall, Disney dominated the Comedy/Musical category, Netflix took the lead in both Drama and Miniseries, and HBO had noticeably less success. Perhaps the juggernaut network of serialized drama has officially handed the torch over to Netflix. Whatever the case it’s clear in this golden age of television, HBO isn’t the only fish in this increasingly busy sea of streamers. So, what else can we glean from the winners?
THE RISE OF THE MINISERIES
The Miniseries or TV Film category was introduced to the Globes back in 1971 but was long considered a less prestigious category than Comedy/Musical Series and Drama. Fast forward to 2025 and some of the biggest shows to release are now home to this category. This is mostly thanks to the shrinking seasons of television.
With TV production leveling way up, shooting a single episode of a big show like Game of Thrones – a show reported to have spent $15 million per episode by its final season – can sometimes cost more than shooting an entire film. Plus, the demand now placed on streamers to create an unending catalog of content to keep up with binge culture has pushed the focus from running long seasons to making shorter ones but more of them.
Baby Reindeer was the 3rd most watched show on Netflix last year and stayed on internet feeds in the form of memes and conspiracy theories long after it left the Netflix Top 10 – which shows just how much power the miniseries holds in the TV space today.
Takeaway: How can you capitalize on the miniseries buzz as a writer? Next time you’re drafting a pilot or thinking up new ideas, consider what story concepts might benefit from being told in a short-form series. Just make sure you’re not forcing it. If you have an idea for a world that you can see keep expanding long past a single season, then you know the miniseries isn’t the right medium for it. But if it’s something that would work well as a contained story – like a mystery that would be solved at the end of a handful of episodes or something high concept that risks turning gimmicky with time – , then you may well have just hit the miniseries jackpot.
NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE SCRIPTS PREVAIL
Shōgun being the heavy hitter of the night reaffirms the growing appetite for diversity on our screens. Watching non-English stories with subtitles is no longer as niche as it once was, partly thanks to the meteoric South Korean show Squid Games (the second season of which was nominated in the same Drama category as Shōgun).
Streamers have globalized content in a way we haven’t seen before until now. With the help of trailblazers like Squid Games and the Golden Globes 2020 Best Foreign Language Film Winner Parasite, Hollywood has realized that subtitles don’t scare audiences as much as they once thought they did. Indeed, it was at the Golden Globes in 2020, that Parasite director Bong Jong-ho said the powerful words in his acceptance speech,
“Once you overcome the one-inch-tall barrier of subtitles, you will be introduced to so many more amazing films.”
Takeaway: People want to see stories from all over the world like never before, so don’t shy away from broadening the cultural horizons of your script when it comes to world-building. Sure, the old adage “write what you know” still rings true, but don’t we, as writers, have an obligation to also write what we see, in response to cultural changes?
Shōgun bridged the language gap for its audience in a few innovative ways. One, by having Japanese-speaking characters. And two, by having characters who would have been speaking Portuguese at that time in history, instead speaking in English. This is a way you can move into more diverse storytelling without abandoning all that you know, as well as helping combat subtitle fatigue some viewers might still grapple with.
Takeaway: For non-English speaking writers or writers for whom English is not their native language, hopefully Shōgun’s success can reassure them to keep telling their stories – exactly how they are – with a global audience in arms reach.
GENRE HYBRIDS: THE LIMIT DOES NOT EXIST
Gone are the days when genre was a clean-cut thing and TV shows stayed in their neat little boxes stylistically. Unsurprisingly it was a successful run for the non-genre genre. A standout example being Baby Reindeer, whose dark and twisted subject matter is expertly veiled by comedy. True to hybrid form, the show uses humor to lower our defenses and gut-punch us with its harrowing drama. It’s this dizzying effect that made the show jump from our TV screens (and/or tablets, phones, or screens of any size) and into our hearts.
Takeaway: Don’t be afraid of taking your story all over the genre map. The rules we once knew have been cast aside. TV is now a free-for-all, and your weird and wonderful stories can find a home.
ORIGINAL CONTENT TAKES IT HOME
It was a good night for championing original content. Although Shōgun is based on the 1975 novel of the same name by James Clavell, Hacks and Baby Reindeer are based on entirely original scripts. While scripts derived from intellectual property and reboots dominate the box office, TV today is where writers’ new ideas can flourish, so if you’ve got a fresh concept, consider how TV might work as its format. Don’t lose faith, people want to hear your stories.
And with that the Golden Globes are wrapped, but don’t worry, awards season is just warming up and there’s still plenty to learn. What industry trends or observations did you spot while watching the Globes? And how have they changed the way you’re approaching a current project?
We hope the night’s winners have left you feeling inspired to create fresh and original content that could one day sweep up awards of their own.
Have a TV pilot you’re currently working on? Our 2025 TV Pilot Contest reopens on January 31st, and this year marks the launch of our TV Writers Mentorship Program with showrunner meetings, calls with development execs, pitching prep, and more! You don’t want to miss it.
