Barbie might have won the battle of the box office, but it’s Oppenheimer that has dominated at the first major awards ceremony of the year; Christopher Nolan’s eponymous biopic of the creator of the atom bomb scooped five awards, giving it a boost as the Oscar race picks up steam.

With the Globes separating drama from musicals and comedies, it might have been expected that both of the Barbenheimer juggernauts could have won in their own categories, but while Oppenheimer took the Best Drama Film prize, Barbie lost out in the Best Comedy/Musical category to Poor Things, winning only the inaugural Cinematic and box office achievement prize and Best Original Song, for Billie Eilish.

Barbie also lost out to Poor Things in the prize for the best actress in a comedy, as Emma Stone pipped Margot Robbie to the post. The best dramatic actress role went to Killers of the Flower Moon’s Lily Gladstone, making her the first native American to win a Golden Globe.

Among the men, Oppenheimer’s Cillian Murphy was named the best actor in a drama, while Robert Downey Jr picking up the Golden Globe for best supporting actor. Paul Giamatti won the best comedy actor prize for The Holdovers.

Nolan won the best directing honours but missed out on the screenplay prize to Anatomy of a Fall, which was also named the best foreign film.

The fourth and final season of Succession was the big winner in the TV categories, being named best drama series as well as earning acting awards for Kieran Culkin, Sarah Snook and Britain’s Matthew Macfadyen.

Another British winner was Ricky Gervais, a former host of the awards show, who picked up the first ever Golden Globe for the best stand-up comedy performance on TV, for his latest show, Armageddon.

This is the first year since the controversial former organiser of the Globes, the Hollywood Foreign Press Association, was disbanded in an attempt to shake-off long-running scandals, at the HFPA, over racism, sexual discrimination, misogyny and corruption.

“Thanks for changing your game,” remarked Robert Downey Jr as he collected his award, and the strong turn-out of nominees suggested that many in Hollywood are at least prepared to give the new organisers the benefit of the doubt.

But they still face sexual harassment and racial discrimination claims from at least one former member, expelled from the organisation during the process of trying to win back support from Hollywood, despite the HFPA’s own investigation failing to stand up allegations of sexual assault, first raised on a Hollywood gossip website. But while the lawsuit makes its way slowly through the courts, the organisers will be relieved that most of the press coverage was limited to the glitz and the glamour – helped by the fact that the new owners of the Globes, Eldridge Industries and Dick Clark Productions, share the same owners as most of the industry press, Variety, The Hollywood Reporter and the Deadline website.

The Hollywood stars and their publicists – who’d long boycotted the awards during their transition – will be hoping that they haven’t welcomed many of the previously shunned Golden Globe voters back with open arms too soon.

But attention will quickly turn to the other awards ceremonies, as the labour unions – including the writers and actors, who spent much of the past year on strike – try to put their own troubles behind them as they seek to restore credibility to the entertainment industry’s back-slapping season, that culminates in March at the Oscars.