The tastemakers at HBO cordially invite you to "The Gilded Age," a feathered and flounced costume party disguised as a premium-cable period drama. Even if you have a weakness for snobby servants and heroines with parasols and moxie, you should approach the latest project from "Downton Abbey" creator Julian Fellowes with extreme caution. And maybe a bucket of cold water to dash your comfort-TV dreams before the series does it first.
Debuting Monday, "The Gilded Age" should just call itself "Downton Abbey, American Style," because that is clearly the goal. Judging by the series' anemic early episodes, the Americans are not yet fit to touch the hem of the Dowager Countess of Grantham's garment.
Set in New York City in the late 1800s, "The Gilded Age" looks at the fraught yet fabulously styled lives of the old-money families who are about to take a dive in history's power rankings and the nouveau riche upstarts who are encroaching on their manicured turf. It also pokes into the downstairs lives of the cooks, butlers and ladies' maids who keep these high-maintenance lives humming.
In the series, the old-guard is represented by the formidable widow Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) and her spinster sister, Ada Brook (Cynthia Nixon). When the first episode kicks off, Agnes and Ada's status-conscious world is about to be rocked on two fronts.
First comes the news that their irresponsible brother, Henry, has died, and his penniless daughter, Marian (Louisa Jacobson), is coming to live with them. Then there is the arrival of George and Bertha Russell (Morgan Spector and Carrie Coon), the new-money couple whose social invasion doesn't stop with the over-the-top mansion they built right across the street from Agnes' old-money palace.
Agnes hasn't met the Russells yet, and she doesn't intend to. They receive the "old" people, Agnes explains to the baffled Marian, but not the "new."
"Never the new," Agnes sniffs.
But Bertha Russell has other ideas. Many other ideas.
As played by the always-wonderful Coon ("Fargo," "The Sinner"), Bertha is a bulldozer fueled by Champagne and seething ambition. While George's railroad-tycoon money is enough to buy her a mansion, a dazzling wardrobe and a temperamental French chef, it cannot buy her the old-money respect she craves. She is snubbed at charity events, excluded from social soirees and even belittled in her own home, where everyone from society mavens to butlers look down on her manners, her clothes and her fork placement.
It's not easy being Bertha Russell, but when Coon is on screen, watching "The Gilded Age" is a lot more fun. Nothing brings an enervated viewer back to life like Coon thundering, "I said specifically, 'NO CHRYSANTHEMUMS!'"
The series might improve as it goes along, but the major problem with the first handful of episodes is that the trappings are big, but the stakes feel very small. The dramatic score by Harry Gregson-Williams and Rupert Gregson-Williams swells with strings and foreboding, but it is mostly in the service of scenes that fizzle out before your glassy eyes.
Whereas the first season of "Downton Abbey" gave us the sinking of the Titanic, a dead man in Lady Mary's bed, the radicalization of sweet Lady Sybil and the arrival of a left-field heir (Cousin Matthew! Welcome!), "The Gilded Age" rolls out a creaky tea cart of stale class warfare, lukewarm social commentary and bland characters. Even the admirable introduction of Peggy Scott (the earnest Denée Benton), a young Black journalist from a well-off family, doesn't jolt the plot out of its tasteful stupor.
Baranski does her best to bring some Dowager-style snark to the party, but Fellowes' barbs are mostly toothless. And while the supporting cast is packed with such scene-stealing veterans as Donna Murphy ("Mercy Street"), Jeanne Tripplehorn ("Mrs. America") and Audra McDonald ("The Good Fight"), much of the plot burden falls on the shoulders of the younger performers. And sadly, they aren't really up to it.
This is particularly true for Jacobson, a TV newcomer and the youngest of Meryl Streep's three actress daughters. Marian is supposed to be the breath of fresh rebel air that stirs up her aunts' musty universe, but Jacobson's performance is dutiful and a little dull. The same goes for Harry Richardson and Taissa Farmiga as Bertha and George's surprisingly decent children. They are perfectly likable, and not memorable at all.
Like the striving, conniving Bertha, "The Gilded Age" wants to be something it's not. Unlike Bertha, it is not willing to go down in flames trying. It wears its costumes well, but it then it just sits there, waiting for you to admire it. Don't bother.
———
"The Gilded Age" debuts Monday at 9 p.m. ET on HBO and streams on HBO Max.
