If awards season has historically taught us anything at all, it’s that there is no prize for second place.

There are no runners up at the Oscars, no consolation prizes at the Golden Globes. It’s first place or nothing; win or – well – didn’t win.

As a result, the garrulous, champagne-fuelled weeks of awards ceremonies – beginning in earnest with the Golden Globes in early January, and ending with the Oscars at the end of February – can feel exhausting. The race to the top is a tiring one, littered with months of increasingly antagonistic speculation over which film was the fairest of them all. And it only gets worse once the spotlight is shone on each individual acting category – especially for women.

This year, the conversation has been dominated by the perceived competition between Glenn Close and Lady Gaga, duking it out for the Best Actress prize at both the Golden Globes, the Critics’ Choice Awards, next week’s Screen Actor’s Guild Awards and, if all goes according to plan, next month’s Oscars. Close, a six-time Oscar nominee and film legend, turned in a career-best performance in the 2018 adaptation of Meg Wolitzer’s The Wife, while Gaga defied the odds with her debut starring role in Bradley Cooper’s swoony remake of A Star is Born.

How the Critics’ Choice Awards turned the ‘women against women’ narrative on its head