The Gilded Age

“The Gilded Age” is easily the best new series of 2022 and sets a high bar for shows that will follow.

While the five episodes of this series provided in advance to critics have yet to hit that "Poor Mr. Pamuk" sweet spot of scandal, the potential is here for a simply delicious period soap opera.

A triumph of dazzling production and costume design, The Gilded Age astonishes with its opulence and entertains with its colorful depiction of class warfare in corsets. [31 Jan - 13 Feb 2022, p.4]

It's early to pronounce this fully as another "Downton"-like addiction, with one movie and another on the way. Yet Fellowes has laid out the foundation for a period soap with that lofty potential, in what is already a very enticing piece of "Abbey"-adjacent real estate.

Each episode pops with eye-catching practical sets combined with seamless CGI and crackles with crisp exchanges.

The Gilded Age can occasionally feel like it's spinning its wheels rather than chugging full-steam ahead. ... Later on, however, the series starts to generate more momentum, courtesy of bigger drama and more severe repercussions for certain characters' actions, and it's in those events that The Gilded Age establishes itself as a title wholly independent of any that might have come before — provided viewers are willing to wade through the filler to get to the substance.

As with Downton Abbey, Fellowes' impulse to explore the nuances of his series' world sometimes seem at odds with his instincts as a storyteller. ... Yet, also as with Downton Abbey, it's pretty tough to resist, both because Fellowes is so skilled at setting up suspense about what will happen next and the rich performances of the cast.

Julian Fellowes delivers must-see TV with an all-star, Americanized spin on his beloved “Downton Abbey’ and creates a glittering feast for the eyes and ears. Is the series more playful than profound, more froth than substance? Maybe. It's also perfectly irresistible.

“The Gilded Age” may not offer penetrating insights into the late 19th century, or the vast gulf between tycoons building extravagant empires and the poverty of those at the bottom of the economic ladder. Fellowes and his collaborators instead seem focused on maintaining a light, satiric touch. It may not be illuminating, but “The Gilded Age” is undeniably entertaining.

As with the real society soirees in 1880s New York, it’s the powerful women who promise to make The Gilded Age an inviting weekly fixture.

The subject matter could have lent itself to something spikier. But Fellowes specialises in comfort television; one of his great skills is marshalling people and plots into one coherent, satisfying whole. By that measure, this is his best show since Downton.

The best advice I can give is just to enjoy. It’s an enchanting period soap opera in which every character is delivering a loud, scene-stealing performance. I can’t think of anything more pleasant.

The Gilded Age harnesses the best of Fellowes' writing and applies it to American history. While slow at points, this HBO drama is set to be a hit with Downton fans and while not as saucy as Bridgerton, The Gilded Age will certainly appeal to the romantics out there.

In its early going, “The Gilded Age” struggles in one area — dialogue — but excels in enough others to keep viewers of the right cast of mind engaged. To borrow a phrase, the show’s ambition has written a check that, thanks to elegant acting and careful attention to detail, “The Gilded Age” can cash.

Come for that view, and this cast, and Fellowes' peerless talent for world-building — or at least a to-the-manor-born world. Don't come for any fresh insights into the American character. This is mostly fantasy, not a history lesson.

Like Fellowes’ other period dramas, “The Gilded Age” has zip. It’s not stuffy or fusty. It feels effortlessly modern, even as many of its old school players are dragged, kicking and screaming, into modernity.

What attempts The Gilded Age does make to investigate the psyches of its working-class characters prove reductive, like when it reveals horrific elements from Bridget’s past. Far more compelling is the gradual illumination of Bertha’s profound rage.

“Downton Abbey” detractors may see too many similarities to invest in the next chapter of Julian Fellowes’ “Gosford Park” successors. But if you’re normally enamored with period dramas, Masterpiece on PBS, or well-orchestrated ensemble pieces, “The Gilded Age” should provide plenty of entertainment in the weeks to come.

The Gilded Age as it stands is a pleasant enough distraction for another COVID winter, though you’ll likely find yourself wondering what might have been if it had made just a few different choices along the way.

What's important for the viewer is whether you see these remakes and enjoy how they're being employed in a broader and more ostentatious stage, or scoff at Fellowes' nearly precise lifts from Wharton or her male contemporary Henry James. ... All of it dares a certain kind of "Masterpiece" acolyte to complain missing the relative quietude of English countryside and nitpick over elocutionary details. The rest of us will be content to drool at each of Bertha's fabulous dresses or chortle at Agnes' quick comebacks.

Social ills are in there—more than window dressing, less than focus—but the main drive or intent of The Gilded Age is to titillate like a good gossip session might. To make the audience feel the giddy tingle of whispered scandal, to be lulled by the formality of upper crust decorum. If that stuff didn’t work for you when Downton reigned supreme, it likely won’t again when The Gilded Age arrives on Monday. And that’s just fine.

It’s an elegantly told, gorgeously designed, and finely acted tale. ... There are a lot of balls in the air in “The Gilded Age,” and Fellowes isn’t quite a master of them all yet. In service of another trend in period shows, Fellowes occasionally looks back at the era from a contemporary perspective, also with uneven results.

“The Gilded Age” is mostly interested in exploring Marian’s status as a window into both worlds, which isn’t nearly as exciting as one would hope. ... Still, a lot of narrative chickens have yet to roost, and there are enough ephemeral delights in “The Gilded Age” to make it worth an initial gander.

Baranski is a goddess of acerbic condescension, but that can only go so far, and Coon’s quest to become as big a snob as her neighbors doesn’t exactly qualify as inspirational. Still, it sparkles and is highly watchable.

It’s perfectly watchable, and every intention and motive is signposted with Fellowes’s usual clarity. ... The Gilded Age would like you to think it is a missing Henry James novel, but it feels broad-brush by comparison.

Because he works with types—types he himself has established in his various programs—Mr. Fellowes can move the narrative along its track without sacrificing dialogue to the inconvenience of character development. We know who these people are. They're clichés—not unpleasant but wholly unsurprising. ... The real drama resides in the Russells, who are the least believable characters in the series. (Only five episodes were made available for review, which doesn't bode well, but maybe it gets better?)

For the most part, it entertains without illuminating. Fellowes recycles too many of his favorite archetypes, from the closeted gay couple to the scheming servant. And while he includes two households’ worth of “below stairs” characters, their story lines go largely undeveloped in the five episodes sent for review.

None of the stories are dull, but they’re somewhere between bland and familiar. The same is true of the look of The Gilded Age. ... At its best, Downton Abbey was a brainy, polished soap opera of the highest order and, thus far, The Gilded Age could use more of that soapiness.

It’s far more ambitious than anything Fellowes tried with Downton, but at times more ungainly, too. The servants barely have anything to do, for instance, and it can be hard to keep track of various relationships and feuds among this huge cast.

An exquisitely empty story of Old New York, “The Gilded Age” wanders aimlessly through Edith Wharton territory, minus the self-awareness, the wit or even halfway decent writing. ... That said, I do like some of the show’s visual motifs.

The Gilded Age is a feast for the eyes, and its aesthetic pleasures are undeniable — but those are the only pleasures to be found here.

“The Gilded Age” simply lacks bite. It’s a “costume drama” that gets the first part beautifully right but smothers the drama part of that description with airs of pretense and perfection. Like so many artifacts of this year, it looks great but carries no weight.

The whole thing feels much too rote and timid for HBO—even if the costumes deliberately evoke modern sensibilities and wouldn’t be out of place on the ladies of And Just Like That, who are trying as resolutely to assert their relevance in a changing world as Agnes is. The mood is too saturnine, the occasional nods to social criticism too stilted.

Beyond a normal, warmblooded amount of interest in a developing love triangle between Marian, a handsome young solicitor (Thomas Cocquerel), and the maybe-slightly-more-handsome young scion of the Russell family (Harry Richardson), I truly can’t bring myself to care about these people and their airless drawing room lives.

The series’s headlining star is Carrie Coon, who’s trapped in an iciness from which Fellowes barely lets her stir. (She’s hardly alone; the sprawling cast is chockablock with beloved actors, nearly all saddled with frustratingly underwritten characters.) ... Apart from Peggy, whose journeys between the Black and White New Yorks provide some novelty, there is hardly anyone to root for or invest in.

It’s a muddled and slapdash portrait, though — a thin gloss on its superior sources that consistently dips into caricature. Fellowes’s heart doesn’t seem to have been in it; certainly his ear wasn’t.