Star-studded Downton of New York
OLD money, old families, ambitious arrivistes, shenanigans on all floors ... must be a new Julian Fellowes drama.
However, for The Gilded Age, he takes us across the Atlantic — time travelling back to 1882, flinging open the shutters on the grand mansions that lined the Upper West Side of New York’s Fifth Avenue.
‘They have been in charge since the Mayflower,’ one character says of the city’s ruling class into which our heroine, Marion Brook, an orphaned young woman played by Louisa Jacobson, is plunged when she seeks shelter with her aristocratic aunts, played by Cynthia Nixon and Christine Baranski.
Baranski’s eagle-eyed, regal Agnes van Rhijn is a sort of American cousin to Maggie Smith’s Dowager Countess in Downtown Abbey, with a tongue just as sharp.
There are all manner of intrigues in the plot, most involving Jacobson’s Marion and Denee Benton as her friend Peggy Scott. The story also spins around merciless magnate George Russell (Morgan Spector) and his avaricious wife Bertha (Carrie Coon). Their graduate son Larry is played by Harry Richardson — Drake Carne in Poldark. And Taissa Farmiga has a key role as daughter Gladys.
Fellowes, fellow production executive Gareth Neame and their team gathered a sublime ensemble that includes the crème de la crème of Broadway. As I viewed the first five episodes (of the nine-part first season), I spotted Audra McDonald, Kelli O’Hara, Nathan Lane and Katie Finneran, people I’ve watched on the New York stage for years.
Jeanne Tripplehorn and Bill Irwin are in the company, too. Let’s hope HBO books a second season. n The Gilded Age will be on Sky Atlantic and NOW from January 25.