The Golden Globes enjoyed their highest TV ratings in a decade, as 20.9m Americans tuned in to watch Tina Fey and Amy Poehler present the annual film awards ceremony – a rise of 6% on last year.
In the second year they have presented the awards, Fey and Poehler built on their 2013 debut, which improved upon the rating for the Ricky Gervais-hosted 2012 awards by 17%. They triggered a huge amount of blog and social media conversation for their hosting which was full of witty zingers, fake teeth and on-stage drinking. On Kathryn Bigelow's controversial Afghanistan thriller Zero Dark Thirty, Poehler remarked "when it comes to torture, I trust the lady who spent three years married to James Cameron", while they compared Daniel Day Lewis to E.T., and Fey called Quentin Tarantino "the star of all my sexual nightmares" – it was frothy yet cutting presenting that launched a thousand appreciative gifs.
This year, they continued their well-received gags, with the night's finest one-liner at the expense of George Clooney, describing his film Gravity with Sandra Bullock as "the story of how George Clooney would rather float away into space and die than spend one more minute with a woman his own age."
The pair are signed on to present next year's ceremony as well, and were hired following an increasingly abrasive run of presenting from Gervais. Poehler also won a Golden Globe for her lead performance in sitcom Parks and Recreation. Fey meanwhile is to star alongside Gervais in the forthcoming Muppets Most Wanted, and Tooken, a sitcom she co-wrote with 30 Rock writer Robert Carlock, recently entered production.
