The Golden Globes, which The Foreign Press Association is considering renaming the Benedict Cumberbatch invitational, was marked by consistently unfunny North Korea gags, predictable outrage about North Korea gags on Twitter and Benedict Cumberbatch.

The Golden Globes have been noteworthy in recent years as being the edgy awards ceremony with hosts regularly lampooning celebrities during the show. The Baton was passed from Ricky Gervais to Tina Fey and Amy Poehler three years ago and the strategy continues to be a ratings success.

It does however provide ample opportunity for people who are reportedly a lot of fun at parties to point out how offensive the whole thing is.

This year the most ire was raised by a series of jokes about North Korea in response to the hacking scandal and subsequent terrorist threat in relation to the movie The Interview, which itself was an unfunny satire about North Korea, although it did star that delightful James Franco.

The (un)Australian approached Benedict Cumberbatch for comment and can report that he charmed the pants off us.

As for others on Twitter, most smugly took the moral high ground by pointing out that life was pretty terrible in North Korea and that these jokes made light of their suffering.

Humourless twitter user Gerald Snell told The (un)Australian, “It’s all very well for people to laugh at North Korea but every time they laugh god kills a kitten,” before adding, “jokes about anything that I can link in any way to a serious issue aren’t funny.”

The worst thing about the North Korea gags was, of course, that none of them featured Benedict Cumberbatch.

Ryan Crawford

Twitter: @RyanTheCrawford

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Categories: Arts, Media

Tags: amy poehler, awards, benedict cumberbatch, golden globes, jokes, north korea, offense, ricky gervais, Ryan Crawford, tina fey, Twitter