New series, familiar story

A decade ago, Julian Fellowes transfixed audiences with Downton Abbey, his lavish soap opera about Britain’s dwindling aristocracy and the servants who catered to them. Now he’s back with a new costume drama, but this time the story takes place in late 19th-century America rather than early 20th-century England. The Gilded Age, on HBO and HBO Max, follows the lives of upper-crust New Yorkers living during one of America’s most extravagant periods, but while this new series offers some entertainment, it doesn’t offer much new.

The Gilded Age takes place in a world of old aristocratic families and newly rich robber barons vying for the right to decide what kind of country America will be. Fellowes invites viewers to experience this world through the eyes of Marian Brook, played by Meryl Streep’s daughter Louisa Jacobson. Marian is a penniless girl from a good family who moves to New York after her father’s death. She must rely on the good graces of her wealthy Aunt Agnes, played with acerbic wit by Christine Baranski. But Aunt Agnes has her own worries. She’s obsessed with making sure New York’s old money maintains its preeminent position, refusing to have any social contact with her supposed inferiors.

It becomes harder and harder for Agnes to keep her world from changing when the obscenely rich railroad magnate George Russell, a solid performance by Morgan Spector, builds a palace across the street. George’s wife Bertha, played by Carrie Coon, has everything she wants except recognition from the most respectable ladies in town, and she’s irritated at her inability to buy her way into polite society.

The Gilded Age is rated TV-MA, and I worried HBO had created a racier version of Downton Abbey. So far, that hasn’t been the case. The series was originally meant for NBC, but with spiraling production costs and COVID delays, HBO took over the project to enhance its prestige-television offerings. Fellowes includes a homosexual subplot, just as he did in Downton Abbey, but other than that the first episodes have been pretty tame. So far, the series hasn’t contained anything that couldn’t air on PBS.

In fact, if The Gilded Age has a fault, it’s that Fellowes doesn’t give us much that he hasn’t already shown us on PBS. Attractive young people still look for suitable spouses, but still lack the money or status necessary for happiness. The old guard still tries to maintain tradition despite the implacable advance of history. Upstairs we still find cash-strapped, well-to-do families in which idealistic youths challenge their more cynical elders. Downstairs we still find the competent butler and housekeeper, who busy themselves keeping their eyes on the conniving lady’s maid and the valet with a mysterious past.

The series’ new setting opens it to a couple of new angles. In addition to highlighting the familiar themes of class and gender discrimination, Fellowes attempts to tackle race in America by providing Marian a black companion named Peggy who becomes Aunt Agnes’ secretary. Also, watching the ascendancy of the robber barons during the 19th century feels strangely relevant in our age of tech titans frolicking in outer space.

The show indulges in some moralizing, but true to the age, it looks toward American transcendentalism rather than the Bible for its ethical compass: One character admonishes another that the surest guide anyone can have is their own personal moral code. That kind of thinking might help you become a titan of industry, but it won’t help you become righteous.

In The Gilded Age, Fellowes offers viewers types and tropes from his past stories, and fans of those stories might find themselves nostalgic for the early days of Downton Abbey when all this seemed fresh and new. But while I wished for more originality, I found myself enjoying the series anyway. There’s a reason Downton Abbey became a phenomenon. And once again, Fellowes gives us smartly written characters, filmed in lavish sets and costumes, trying to fall in love. It’s not new, but it works.