Review: "The Gilded Age" (2022)

A decade ago the British TV show Downton Abbey took the world by storm. The tale of a noble family on a huge estate and their servants in the nineteen-teens and twenties -- think Upstairs, Downstairs meets Brideshead Revisited -- became everyone's favorite soap opera, a mix of historical grandeur combined with modern morality.

Downton Abbey was created by Julian Fellowes whose new show, much like his previous one, is a period piece set in the world of the rich and those who serve them. 

Set in New York City in 1882, The Gilded Age concerns two families who live across the street from each other (East 61st Street, precisely) but who live in totally different worlds -- the Old New York, Old Money Brooks vs. the social-climbing, New Money Russells. The story kicks off with Marian, the daughter of the sisters Ada and Agnes Brooks' estranged dead brother, coming to live with them in their NYC townhouse from Pennsylvania. On her way to the city, she meets Peggy who, for a variety of convenient reasons, moves in with Marian and her aunts. Peggy is a child of a black enclave in Brooklyn who wants to become a writer -- and who gets a job as a secretary to Agnes, and who must negotiate life as a black woman in white patriarchal world. Meanwhile, across the street, the railroad-rich but socially-poor Russells move into their newly constructed, Stanford B. White-designed, overly decorated mansion and throw a huge "mansion warming" party (the house is even derisively called "a folly"). It is their attempt to win over New York "society" and it fails completely -- almost no one comes. But when Marian meets Larry, the Russell's oldest son, well ... let's just say that things will get interesting.

I've only seen the pilot for this show so I can't tell if it'll be great or awful. So far the reviews of The Gilded Age have been mixed. It has the potential to be a beautiful, deeply-felt drama exploring the toxic mix of class and race, sex and society, power and submission. Fellowes is a very talented writer who creates great characters, snappy dialogue, and beautifully executed scenes. But, as in Downton, his observations about class and money and society are very heavy-handed and not subtle at all ("You're Old New York, don't forget it" is a real line -- okay then!). If it goes down that road, then the show will be a total bore.

However, what absolutely makes this show worth watching is the cast -- after all, Agnes and Ada are played by Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon and, honestly, I wish the show was just about them and no one else. Marian is played by someone named Louisa Jacobson who is very good (which is not surprising considering that she's Meryl Streep's daughter). The show is littered with Broadway actors like Donna Murphy and my personal favorite Audra McDonald and they are all great. And even Simon Jones, who forty-year ago this month was blazing the screens with Jeremy Irons in Brideshead Revisited, plays the Brooks' long-serving English butler. The cast along will keep me coming back. 

I just hope the storylines are as good as the actors. 

But it is wonderful to see a drama set during a fascinating period of New York City history that isn't often put on the screen. The Gilded Age reminds us that social striving, greed, lust, and all the attendant vagaries thereof, are nothing new. They are as old as Old New York.

And if you want to learn more about the real "gilded age" in NYC, go here and see below.