BREAKING NEWS: Baby Reindeer’s Richard Gadd Calls ‘Dark’ Show ‘Universal’ After Golden Globes Win: ‘People Are Struggling’ .giang

Baby Reindeer won big at the 2025 Golden Globes.

On Sunday, Jan. 5, the series was named the best television limited series, anthology series or motion picture made for television at the ceremony, winning against Disclaimer, Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story, The Penguin, Ripley and True Detective: Night Country.

While accepting the award, the show’s creator, writer and star Richard Gadd opened up about the significance of the win.

“A lot of people sometimes ask me why a show this dark has gone on to be the success that its had and I think a lot of ways, people have been crying out for something that kind of spoke to the painful inconsistencies of being human,” Gadd explained.

“For a while now there’s been this belief in television that stories that are too dark and complicated won’t sell and no one will watch them,” he continued. “So I hope that Baby Reindeer has done away with that theory because I think that right now when the world’s in the state that it’s in and people are struggling, we need stories that speak to the complicated and difficult nature of our times.”

“Any story when done right is universal,” Gadd added. “And all of the weird idiosyncratic struggles we go through on a daily basis are just as worthy of being committed to screen as any. So commissioners, streamers, when you’re touring up the numbers and putting together the budgets for the year, remember to keep some back for the little person to tell their story.”

Baby Reindeer follows bartender and aspiring comedian (Gadd) who is relentlessly stalked by a woman (Jessica Gunning). The limited series also deals with tricky subjects including sexual assault and mental health.

Not only did Gadd create, write and star in the Netflix show, but it was also loosely based on his own real life experiences.

“It’s very emotionally true, obviously: I was severely stalked and severely abused,” he told The Guardian in mid-April. “But we wanted it to exist in the sphere of art, as well as protect the people it’s based on.”

In addition to the show, both Gadd and Gunning were nominated for best actor in a limited series and best supporting actress respectively. Gunning took home the prize earlier in the evening.

The other nominees also provided viewers with captivating television this year.

Disclaimer, based on Renée Knight’s best-selling novel of the same name, followed acclaimed journalist Catherine Ravenscroft (Cate Blanchett), who “built her reputation revealing the misdeeds and transgressions of others,” per the official synopsis.

But when Catherine is sent a novel by an unknown author, “she is horrified to realize she is now the main character in a story that exposes her darkest secrets.”

As she tries to find out the writer’s true identity, she has to “confront her past before it destroys both her own life” and her relationships with both her husband, Robert (Sacha Baron Cohen), and their son Nicholas (Kodi Smit-McPhee).

In addition to the show, Blanchett, 55, was nominated for best performance by an actress in a limited series.

Ryan Murphy‘s Netflix series Monsters: The Lyle and Erik Menendez Story brought one of the most notorious criminal cases of the 1990s back into the forefront.

The series examined how and why Erik (Cooper Koch) and Lyle Menendez (Nicholas Alexander Chavez) murdered their parents, José (Javier Bardem) and Kitty (Chloe Sevigny) — including the brothers’ in-court allegations that their parents were sexually and emotionally abusive.

Koch, who was also nominated for best performance by a male actor alongside Javier Bardem  for best supporting actor, previously told PEOPLE that the nod was “a big moment” for the brothers.

“That’s what I’m most happy about, is that they get a big stage,” he said of the importance of the show being recognized, adding that he was eager to share the news with the Menendez brothers.

The Penguin, a limited eight-episode series which picks up after the events of Robert Pattinson‘s 2022 portrayal of The Batman, showed how Oz Cobb (Colin Farrell) tries to take a leadership role in the Gotham City underworld.

In addition to the series, Farrell and Cristin Miliot were both nominated for respective best actor and actress in a limited series.

While speaking to PEOPLE in September, Farrell, 48, opened up about his dramatic transformation to portray the titular role.

“I had a bodysuit, so I was basically covered wrist to ankle. Only things that were me were my hands and feet,” he explained. “Everything else, including ears, were pieces. Everything was covered.”

Netflix’s Ripley, based on Patricia Highsmith’s 1955 novel The Talented Mr. Ripley, stars Andrew Scott as con-man Tom Ripley. The story had previously been told in the 1999 movie The Talented Mr. Ripley starring Matt Damon and Jude Law, and Scott, 47, wanted to put a new twist on the tale.

“People have a lot of preconceptions about Tom Ripley,” Scott told Netflix’s Tudum in July. “So it’s my job, I suppose in some ways, to ignore all that and try to create our own particular version of it.”

In addition to the series, Scott and his costar Dakota Fanning were also nominated for best actor and actress in a supporting role respectively.

True Detective: Night Country follows Detective Liz Danvers (Jodie Foster) as she attempts to figure out what happened to eight missing men who worked at the Tsalal Arctic Research Station in Ennis, Alaska.

At the series’ January premiere, Foster told reporters at the Paramount Theater in Los Angeles that her character was an “Alaska Karen.”

“Liz Danvers is awful. She is ‘Alaska Karen.’ No two ways about it,” she admitted. “She’s an awful, awful character. But you see why.”

“You see where that came from and you see what she’s struggling against and the turmoil that’s in her and the protectiveness and the love that she has for her partner in the film [played by Kali Reis], her other trooper character.”

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