The Gilded Age arrived on HBO in 2022 as Julian Fellowes’ return to the period drama that made him a household name. Set in 1880s New York City, the show explored the collision between old money aristocracy and the new industrial fortunes that were reshaping American society. If Downton Abbey examined the British class system through the lens of a country estate, The Gilded Age applied the same scrutiny to the American version, where money was newer, louder, and even more transformative.
The show centered on Marian Brook, a young woman who arrives in New York to live with her wealthy aunts and finds herself caught between the established old guard of New York society and the brash new money families building their fortunes and mansions across the street. The setup was pure Fellowes: a social world governed by elaborate rules, populated by people who either enforce those rules or fight to break them.
The Spectacle of New Money and Old Manners
The production design was the show’s most immediate strength. HBO’s budget allowed for a visual recreation of 1880s New York that was breathtaking in its detail. The mansions, the costumes, the street scenes, every frame was filled with the kind of period authenticity that made you forget you were watching a contemporary production. The contrast between the austere elegance of old money and the ostentatious display of new wealth was rendered with a visual sophistication that enriched every scene.
Christine Baranski’s Agnes van Rhijn and Carrie Coon’s Bertha Russell anchored the show’s central conflict with performances of immense skill. Baranski played old New York snobbery with acidic precision, delivering cutting remarks with a timing that made social cruelty feel like high art. Coon’s Bertha was her perfect antagonist: ruthlessly ambitious, strategically brilliant, and utterly unwilling to accept the social exclusion that the old guard tried to enforce.
The supporting ensemble brought depth to both the upstairs and downstairs worlds. Denee Benton’s Peggy Scott provided the show with its most distinctive storyline, navigating 1880s New York as a Black woman from a wealthy family with ambitions of her own. Peggy’s storyline, while occasionally underserved by the show’s crowded narrative, added a dimension to the period drama that Fellowes’ previous work had largely omitted.
Morgan Spector’s George Russell brought a quiet menace to the role of Bertha’s railroad-tycoon husband, a man whose power operated in boardrooms rather than ballrooms. His understated performance provided a grounding force in a show that sometimes tilted toward melodrama, and his scenes carried the weight of the economic forces that were actually driving the era’s transformation.
The Downton Abbey Problem
The show’s biggest challenge was the inevitable comparison to Downton Abbey, and on that score, opinions divided. Fellowes’ formula, interconnected storylines spanning social classes, romantic complications, social maneuvering, and dramatic reversals timed to episode endings, was executed with professional skill but felt overly familiar to viewers who’d already spent six seasons in the Crawley household. The mechanics were identical, only the accents and the architecture had changed.
The sheer number of storylines sometimes worked against the show’s ability to develop any of them fully. With multiple households, romance plots, business machinations, and social campaigns all competing for screen time, certain threads received insufficient attention. Characters would disappear for episodes at a time, and some subplots resolved with a haste that suggested the writers had run out of room rather than finding natural conclusions.
Louisa Jacobson’s Marian Brook, ostensibly the show’s protagonist, was consistently the least dynamic character in a cast full of scene-stealers. Her storyline carried the narrative but lacked the dramatic force that Baranski, Coon, and the supporting cast brought to theirs. The audience stand-in character, a Fellowes staple, felt more like a structural obligation than a compelling presence.
America’s Most Glamorous Class War
The Gilded Age’s most interesting undercurrent is its examination of how money rewrites social rules. The old aristocracy’s horror at the new industrial fortunes isn’t just snobbery. It’s the recognition that their world is ending, that the game they’ve spent generations mastering is being replaced by a new game with new rules. That anxiety, the terror of irrelevance, gives the social maneuvering genuine stakes beneath the surface entertainment.
Should You Watch The Gilded Age?
If you enjoyed Downton Abbey and want more of the same formula in an American setting, The Gilded Age delivers handsomely. The production values are outstanding, and the central performances from Baranski and Coon alone justify tuning in. If you found Fellowes’ formula exhausting by the end of Downton, this won’t change your mind. The show does what it does very well but isn’t trying to do anything new. That’s either a comfort or a limitation depending on your perspective.
The Verdict on The Gilded Age
The Gilded Age is Julian Fellowes operating at peak craft within his established formula, delivering period drama that looks stunning and entertains reliably. Baranski and Coon elevate the material into something genuinely compelling, and the show’s portrayal of 1880s New York captures the era’s excess and anxiety with impressive visual detail. It doesn’t reinvent the period drama wheel, but it spins that wheel with enough skill and personality to justify the ride.