Brits Fare Poorly at a Smooth Sailing But Unsurprising Oscars

After a good few years of overlong, cringingly unfunny, and pandering Academy Awards telecasts, this year’s Oscars had a refreshing sharpness and humor to them – led by host Conan O’Brien, whose enthusiasm, wit, and sincerity uplifted a pretty unsurprising and tired roster of awardees. One pack that fared particularly poorly were the Brits – after a bumper roster of talent nominated and winning last year, big names like Ralph Fiennes, Cynthia Erivo, and Wallace & Gromit lost out on trophies, even if British technical artists and craftspeople were much more fortunate. Here, we run down the British highlights of the 97th Academy Awards.

The ceremony started with Ariana Grande singing “Over the Rainbow,” followed by Erivo emerging to dazzle the crowd with a live rendition of “Defying Gravity.” Conan’s opening monologue followed, which made the fun observation that Ralph Fiennes has now been nominated three times, so if he loses again, everyone gets to pronounce his first name phonetically. Tough break, Ralph. (Fiennes did not win Best Actor.)

Onto the awards: no Brits nominated for Best Supporting Actor, but Telly Visions regular Guy Pearce was up for his performance in The Brutalist as the charming but insidious American industrialist Harrison Lee Van Buren. Pearce’s upfront and political candor has been a blessing in such a busy and unpleasant awards season, and while you couldn’t quite call Succession's Kieran Culkin’s win a “robbery”, Pearce was the more deserving recipient. (Also, as Robert Downey Jr. introduced each of the nominees, everyone remembered in real time that Pearce was the villain to Tony Stark in Iron Man 3.)