Julian Fellowes’ The Gilded Age is a product of a bygone era. While the series has is pleasantly entertaining, it initially struggled to distinguish itself as more than just “the American Downton Abbey,” a challenge heightened by how it’s set in a relatively uninvolved historical period. There’s compelling American history to be told about the tail end of the 19th century, but it's not hard to see why a focus on the high society achievements of the New York elite might not be aptly timed. The only film to capture this era is Martin Scorsese’s The Age of Innocence, and that’s because it's consistent with his cynical, abrasive perception of the American dream. That style of sustained misery may not have earned a multi-season renewal or a $100 per-year budget from HBO, so Fellowes opted for a stagey, slick soap opera with no delusions of grandeur.
The Gilded Age isn’t intended to challenge anyone’s beliefs on the appeal of costume dramas; to celebrate them blindly might seem ignorant, but to enjoy the clash between generations of wealth among preeminent East Coast families isn’t much different than accepting the various Hollywood blockbusters with a pro-military agenda. The key to The Gilded Age’s success is that Fellowes has removed the didacticism about class that’s been present in all of his work since Gosford Park; although there’s a strict differentiation between those born to aristocracy and those confined to servitude, mobility is somewhat more flexible. Everyone’s rich and even those with tarnished reputations will still be well-off, but The Gilded Age is able to sidestep potential criticism because the stakes aren’t higher than personal satisfaction.
It’s not idealistic to suggest that wit and willpower can make a poor man rich, and that’s best communicated in Season 4 by the path of Jack Trotter (Ben Ahlers), a footman-turned-inventor whose clock patent earned him a fortune. It’s a sign that the instruments of wealth have turned over from monied dynasties to ambitious entrepreneurs, but that doesn’t change culture overnight; the most insightful scene in the fourth season’s premiere episode “Ring the Bells” is centered on Jack’s comical education in the art of dining protocol. It’s played for laughs, but the sentiment expressed is that the appearance of status is more important than its acquisition.
That concept is fleshed-out by the dynamics between the show’s two veteran actresses, Cynthia Nixon and Christine Baranski, whose roles as the widowed sisters Agnes and Ada embody the push-and-pull of Fellowes’ take on free-market capitalism. The casting of Nixon is somewhat ironic, given that Agnes is an affluent, yet naive socialite whose fortune is retained through increasingly circumstantial incidents. One of the better jokes in Season 4 is that Agnes is honored to hold a dinner on behalf of President Grover Cleveland, only to be informed by her former secretary (and now journalist) Peggy Scott (Denée Benton), an African-American woman, that the current occupant of the White House isn’t progressive in the matter of race relations.
That those with the power to hold galas in recognition of a president whose platform they don’t understand isn’t unbelievable, especially in the case of an innocuous figure like Cleveland; other than Jefferson, Jackson, and Lincoln, the American presidents of the 19th century tend to be grazed over by high school history classes. Fellowes and Nixon treat Agnes with grace, but her daft attempts to make moral judgments within a laissez-faire system is sharply contrasted with that of her sister, a shrewd pragmatist. Baranski has the best line deliveries of the entire cast, and this is one of her best roles; it’s the culmination of a career that has included respectable Broadway credits and mean mugging roles in mainstream comedy films like The Birdcage and Cruel Intentions.
The Gilded Age is easy to mock from a distance if its narrative is reduced to a matter of sham marriages, opera patronage, and dinner party gossip, but on a structural level the series might have the most successfully compartmentalized ensemble cast of any HBO production since Succession. Succession is the rare example where every character was golden, but that’s a rarity, especially in a show like The Gilded Age that has over a dozen series regulars. Fellowes has divided his characters across two continents, three boroughs, and four main dynasties, and is savvy enough to not linger on the last compelling storylines. The prolonged and complicated romance between the orphaned school teacher Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson) and the firstborn son Larry Russell (Harry Richardson) would’ve been a drag if it was the core focus, but it's palatable within a broader coalition of narrative threads that dovetail with one another.
The acting powerhouse of the series is the dynamic between Larry’s parents, Bertha (Carrie Coon) and George (Morgan Spector), who are distanced for the first time in Season 4 due to familial obligations on different sides of the Atlantic. It’s a bold enough choice to separate the two best actors in the ensemble, but The Gilded Age has made an effort to give them internalized conflicts that exist beyond the back-and-forth banter. Whether that’s sustainable is yet-to-be-determined, but Coon in particular is extraordinary at generating sympathy for a character who can take shots at the pretentious circles that she’s a part of. Between Fargo, The Leftovers, The Sinner, and The White Lotus, Coon is television’s best actress working right now, and The Gilded Age is a platform for her to give monologues and fiery addresses. Fellowes deserves credit for showing that he’s willing to evolve.