It's not hard to find the parallels between "The Gilded Age" and Julian Fellowes' previous work "Downton Abbey," which doesn't make this HBO drama any less delicious. Set in the wealthy corridors of New York during the 1880s, Fellows and his sprawling cast took another sharp look at wealth and class in an earlier time, when even goldsmiths were up against complicated rules.
The background here is not in the British aristocracy, but in the hostility of old-money families whom they dismiss as "newcomers" who have recently come into fortunes, but the claims of the aristocracy that have arrived on the Mayflower. situation is lacking.
The ostentatious displays of that inter-class war and the wealth associated with it are seen through the wide eyes of a new arrival, Marion Brooke (Louisa Jacobson, the youngest of Meryl Streep's talented acting daughters), who, after the death of her father, Travels from rural Pennsylvania to live with his two aunts, the domineering Agnes van Rijn (Christine Baranski) and cousin Ada Brooke (Cynthia Nixon).
Agnes married well, allowing her sister, as she notes, "the pure and quiet life of a spinster." Like the Dowager Countess in "Downton," Fellowes captures her with all the best lines, which Baranski delivers with dripping venom, her fangs barely concealed.
To his constant irritation, the "new" people to whom he objects live directly across the street, in the form of railroad baron George Russell (Morgan Spector) and his wife Bertha (Carrie Coon), who employ an array of Downton-like servants. When the mansion is not maintained, the people below gossip about Russell's chances of being accepted into high society, which is Bertha's tireless target.
"She's built a palace to entertain those who will never come here," mocks Bertha's maid (Kelly Curran), while planning how she can avoid such a service.
This American version also brings race into the mix, with Marion's journey as she is introduced to Peggy Scott (Danny Benton), an aspiring black writer who takes a position in Agnes's employment. Marion's desire to be Peggy's friend betrays both her naivety and the openly racism of the time, though with slight depth, an unavoidable act of everything unfolding above and below.
Fellowes remains an absolute master at finding intriguing wrinkles in a dizzying number of subplots as well as characters with relatively minor roles, such as Blake Ritson as Agnes' scheming son. There's a particular embarrassment of money on the part of the actress, with Audra McDonald, Jean Triplehorn, and Donna Murphy helping classify an already classy addition.
The early episodes (five out of nine were previewed) also chew through the story impressively, indicating that while clothing may look stiff and limited, the pacing is not.
The casting is impeccable as period costumes, with Jacobson as the modest modern newcomer caught in the midst of these old rancor, and Coon and Spector excellent as the ultimate power couple, leveraging their wealth to break down barriers. Manufactured by established establishment playing a long game in lifting.
One of the tensions involves the question of marrying Marianne for anything other than financial gain, a prospect greeted in horror by her practical aunt. "Wouldn't you give anything to my age and experience?" Agnes asks him.
Although real-life figures from the period underlie the story, "The Gilded Age" quickly carves a dense reality into itself. And while many characters have obvious "Downton" counterparts (including life in the closet for gays during this era), the Yankee flavor sets the series apart enough to stand out from it.
It's too early to pronounce it entirely as another "Downton"-like addiction, with one movie and another on the way. Yet Fellows has laid the foundation for a period soap with that high potential in what is already a pretty enticing piece of "AB"-adjacent real estate.