‘I don’t care” was the recurring refrain of Ricky Gervais’s Golden Globe hosting gig on Sunday. Those three words were fired off after his every other crass or impolite zinger, whether he was chastising Leonardo DiCaprio for his youthful dating preferences, proposing to solve the problem of no female directing nominees by banning women from making studio movies, or simply calling James Corden a “fat pussy” (because he’s in Cats, geddit?). “I don’t care!” Gervais repeated, reminding us for the umpteenth time that he wouldn’t be doing this again.

Ricky Gervais is wrong: political engagement at the Golden Globes was essential Read more

It was the British comedian’s fifth go at hosting the most raucous and least prestigious of Hollywood’s major awards shows, and the strain clearly showed. Ten years ago, when he first took the job, there was a kind of gleeful ebullience to his nihilism: not all the jokes landed, but what he didn’t seem to care about were the consequences. This year, as he flatly drawled one weary putdown after another, it was clear he didn’t care about the entire shebang, his own role in it included: with his glory years as a TV star behind him, Gervais was out to prove nothing so much as how over it is he was. An uncharacteristically muted, less-buzzed-than-usual celebrity crowd, meanwhile, looked pretty over it, too. Even Gervais’s best, most pointed jabs – and there were a couple, whether he was bluntly calling Hollywood Foreign Press Association voters racist or impugning the industry for looking the other way with Harvey Weinstein – didn’t elicit the usual gasps or whoops, though exhausted nods were plentiful.

Perhaps the golden age – or even the grubby gold lamé age – of the awards host is simply behind us: in an age where awards ceremonies are mainly fodder to be broken down into various viral highlights, the role of an emcee to link all this future meme material seems increasingly redundant. Gervais’ particular presence as a provocateur, meanwhile, felt particularly extraneous in a year when others on stage were delivering punchier messages, albeit with fewer punchlines.

NBC Entertainment (@nbc) Ricky Gervais kicks off The #GoldenGlobes. pic.twitter.com/ZSdqiWMudx

While the host had preemptively admonished any winners for making political speeches in his intro – “You’re in no position to lecture the public about anything, you know nothing about this real world” – his words went unheeded by many, whether it was an absent Russell Crowe sending a message about climate as evinced by the Australian fire crisis in his stead, an awkward but earnest Joaquin Phoenix imploring the industry to make environmentally-minded changes, or Patricia Arquette and Michelle Williams both using their platforms to take an early stand against Trump in the 2020 election, the latter via an impassioned feminist pro-choice plea.

None of this was especially amusing, but it was awards show gold: Arquette and Williams’ speeches, in particular, got more rousing applause from the otherwise out-of-sorts audience than any of Gervais’ caustic quips, and hogged at least as many headlines the next day. They also kept the right-ring rage machine boiling, as Twitter erupted with an equal volume of cheers and jeers for these fierce queens/Hollyweird liberals. That’s just the mood of the moment: at a particularly glum time for international news, with part of the world literally on fire and war with Iran looming, incendiary threat, it’s no surprise that sincere activism got a louder response than snarky “what are you gonna do about it” apathy. That like would have been the case even if the latter had been delivered by Gervais on peak form, and even he would admit that he wasn’t: that, if anything, was the joke.

Tina Fey and Amy Poehler could have pulled it off, you cry, and they probably would have. The lightning-quick duo’s three-year Globes hosting stint from 2012 to 2014 was a remarkable high-wire achievement, at once warmly playing to the gallery and bluntly speaking truth to power – and in so doing, becoming the only major awards show hosts in the last decade to earn both glowing reviews the next morning and a cherished place in public memory. Chances are you have forgotten that Seth Meyers, Jimmy Fallon and, strangely, Sandra Oh and Andy Samberg ever hosted the Globes. Recent Oscar hosts, meanwhile, have ranged from the blandly proficient (Jimmy Kimmel) to the legendarily calamitous (Anne Hathaway and James Franco); none have met with widespread clamour for a return.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Tina Fey and Amy Poehler host the 72nd Golden Globes. Photograph: Paul Drinkwater/REUTERS

It’s a thankless gig, and the Academy admitted as much last year when, following a series of PR disasters over Kevin Hart’s hiring and firing over homophobic remarks, they simply went hostless. If you’ve forgotten all this, it’s because the presence or otherwise of a host had little impact on the ultimate ceremony’s most quoted and replayed moments: Olivia Colman’s surprise win and endearingly flabbergasted speech, Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga’s teasingly sexy rendition of best song winner Shallow or a dynamite one-off comic routine by first-up presenters Maya Rudolph, Fey and Poehler (how about that) that effectively functioned as a brief, zesty opening monologue. Whatever Hart had up his sleeve, the odds are against it having had equivalent staying power.

All in all, it worked well enough for the Academy to spare themselves the bother and quietly go hostless again this year; few have complained, and it seems this may be the status quo going forward, at least until Rudolph, Fey and Poehler acquiesce to do the whole damn thing together. Perhaps the Globes will be minded to follow suit, particularly if Gervais – more distinctive than their last few hosts, if hardly more agreeable – keeps his word about never returning to this well. It now falls on the witty, broadly beloved Graham Norton, finally hired for the Baftas after years of seeming the obvious man for the job, to make the case for “awards show host” as a viable job this season, though after general controversy over the British Academy’s diversity-challenged nominee slate this morning, he has an unenviable needle to thread on the jokes front. In this new decade, simply not caring isn’t going to cut it.