Huge award wins show you can't afford to miss these HBO shows

The Golden Globes last weekend were a bit of a glitzy affair, which is hardly a surprise, as the first big entrant in the annual glut of award shows around this time of year (in the US and UK, at least). While movies often grab the limelight, the Globes are always nice because they also shine a spotlight on TV and streaming shows.

In fact, if you wanted to use them as a gauge to check on the health of a fair few of the best streaming services, you'd find your eye drawn to a few major successes. HBO has long enjoyed critical success backed up by awards for its biggest shows, and four huge wins at the Globes underlined that you really can't afford to miss its streaming output.

For the sake of clarity, and because the format of the awards involves some staggeringly long category names, here are the four gongs that HBO took home on the night:

• Best television series – musical or comedy: Hacks
• Best female actor in a television limited series, anthology series or television film: Jodie Foster, True Detective: Night Country
• Best male actor in television limited series, anthology series or television film: Colin Farrell, The Penguin
• Best female actor in a television series – musical or comedy: Jean Smart, Hacks

It's an impressive list when you break it down, too, underlining the fact that HBO didn't have just a single huge blockbuster to bring in awards (like Hulu's Shogun, for example, which did terrifically). Hacks scored two hits, one for acting and another for best musical or comedy series (which in the context of the Globes is a bigger award than it arguably sounds).

What's more seismic, though, is nabbing two awards for acting, both in the limited series genre that HBO is so well-known for. Colin Farrell's work on The Penguin was revelatory, despite layers of uncomfortable makeup and prosthetics, and was key in a seriously stellar crime drama that took many of us by surprise.

Jodie Foster has Oscars to her name for a reason, so her brilliant performance in True Detective: Night Country was maybe more expected, but nonetheless fabulous. There are also people out there who'll tell you Cristin Milioti should be gutted not to have beaten Foster for her own work in The Penguin, too.

This proves that no one's doing short series better than HBO right now – which means that anyone serious about streaming needs to get themselves a Max subscription in the US, or a NOW TV Entertainment pass or Sky Atlantic subscription here in the UK.