Look ma, no host: Oscars without a host was a big hit

Did you catch the Oscars last… errr… morning? Did you miss the host? Exactly! The host-less Academy Awards was not at all the humdrum affair one feared it would be after Kevin Hart stepped down from playing the host and several other celebs declined to host it citing scheduling conflicts among other reasons. The first time that Oscars decided to ditch the host was in 1989, and that didn’t go down entirely well. This year, though, Hollywood’s biggest night went as per script, complete with jabs and jibes at Messrs Donald Trump (it’s an Oscars tradition, already), some head-turning dresses (Billy Porter in a custom Christian Siriano was something else), and the customary stage tumble (Rami Malek took a liking for the carpet when he stumbled after the ceremony, but not before becoming the first actor of Arab heritage to win the best actor).

And it wasn’t just that — the biggest win for Academy Awards lay in its inclusiveness this year. Malek, the son of Egyptian immigrants, played Freddie Mercury, an immigrant, in Bohemian Rhapsody, which won four Oscars. The best picture was bagged by Green Book, a period drama about race relations in the 1960s. That movie also gave Mahershala Ali his second Oscar (first was when he received it for

Moonlight in 2017), and he became only the second African-American actor with multiple Oscars (Denzel Washington has won two, too). Regina King won supporting actress for If Beale

Street Could Talk, and Marvel’s Black Panther also made history when two African-American women bagged Oscars — Ruth E. Carter for costume design and Hannah Beachler for production design. And Roma announced the arrival of Netflix to the big league.

The emcee-less show wasn’t just enjoyable, it was also crisper and shorter: 3 hours and 22 minutes this year, down from 3 hours and 53 minutes last year — and a blessing from the yawning 4 hours and 23 minutes in 2002. And while it may not have clocked the 57.25 million viewers that the most-watched Oscars in history boasted (1998, when Titanic swept the awards), the no-host Oscars were a ‘go’ from the audience, including Jimmy Kimmel.