'The Gilded Age' gives old New York money the HBO treatment
The starting point for any discussion of HBO's new series The Gilded Age, from Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellowes, is whether the show is Downton Abbey: Only Now It's On HBO.
After all, this is another period piece, this time set in 1882, in a New York City awash in money. It is still fixated on the etiquette and conventions of the very rich, it still relies heavily on the swoosh of a dress and the reveal of a grand home or a grand room, and the style — we follow from behind, looking over her shoulder, as the woman enters her massive foyer to the sound of swelling music -- will be familiar to Downton viewers.
On money, new and old
But where Downton Abbey turned largely on the dynamic between the rich Crawleys and their staff, The Gildedis about the dynamic between old money and new. Here, old money is represented by sisters Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) and Ada Brook (Cynthia Nixon). Agnes is a widow, and Ada never married, so the two are living together when they're joined by their young niece Marian (Louisa Jacobson), who moves to New York from Pennsylvania after the death of her father, who was estranged from her aunts.
