Look who’s dancing
Opulent fight of rich against even richer:
Quelle: © 2021 Home Box Office
Julian Fellowes invented the British aristocratic series Downton Abbey. With “Gilded Age” he is now telling an epic of the moneyed nobility from the American founding era. That looks good. But has a fundamental problem.
NOf course, “Downton Abbey” is the main problem of the HBO series “The Gilded Age”: “Downton” inventor Julian Fellowes will never again be allowed to put a character in historical costumes without being judged on whether their train flows as elegantly as Lady Cora’s, her love life as adventurous as Lady Mary’s, her tongue as sharp as that of the Dowager Countess of Grantham.
“The Gilded Age” was actually intended as a prequel to “Downton Abbey”: Cora, the wife of the Earl of Grantham, is American. And the New York-based series, according to Julian Fellowes in 2016, was intended to tell the story behind their marriage.
It’s now 2022, and “The Gilded Age” tells the story of the arrival of two misfits in New York at the end of the 19th century: the orphaned and impoverished Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson) moves from rural Pennsylvania to her venerable aunts in the summer of 1882 Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) and Ada Brook (Cynthia Nixon back in the city but without sex) to Manhattan.
At the same time, the ambitious Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon) is moving into her newly built palace of a house directly opposite. She is the wife of the unscrupulous but charming railroad tycoon George (Morgan Spector) and tries to set her handsome son up with the right daughters in order to gain access to the New York moneyed gentry. The servants of the competing houses on Central Park are also re-equipped with their own kitchens, cabals, and catastrophes—at Fellowes, of course.
Especially at the beginning, The Gilded Age feels like getting lost in a crowded ballroom full of posh names. After all, no noble titles confuse. But not overly complex figures either. Quantity instead of class – not only the Fifth Avenue snobs see a problem here.
The Gilded Age series by screenwriter Julian Fellowes
After the death of her father, Marian moves from rural Pennsylvania to New York City to live with her aunts, accompanied by aspiring writer Peggy. There she unintentionally becomes involved in a social war between her relatives and their neighbors.
The playful preoccupation with class differences is known to be Fellowes’ great specialty. Downton Abbey worked because the dramas (and ladies) were mostly able to unfold far from reality on the stage of an English castle. “The Gilded Age” is also always most convincing when intrigues and conversations take place in a private setting. As soon as it hits the streets, it looks like Legoland Nieuw Amsterdam (the proud budget apparently went to costumes, wood paneling and stucco ceilings).
Societal issues are treated with the portliness of the older white lord that Julian Fellowes is. But given the stories and images this city has burned into the collective memory, his craftsmanship is stretched to its limits.
There are smarter series about wars of succession
The struggle of the rich against even richer is not enough as a supporting element. Why not only “Downton Abbey” is a problem of “The Gilded Age”: series like “Billions” or “Succession” deliver significantly more intelligent and also more exciting financial and succession wars. And then there’s the Netflix hit Bridgerton, which turned the historical soap opera genre on its head.
The New York amateur historian Keith Taillon is currently tutoring on “The Real Gilded Age” with great success on his Instagram account @keithyorkcity. There, for example, you can read about Alva Vandterbilt’s legendary costume ball from 1882, with which she inaugurated a hall in her new villa.
The festival would cost the equivalent of around seven million dollars today. 1000 guests were invited. The ladies came in cat skin costumes or with diamond lights.
Bertha Russel also wants to give a lavish reception in “The Gilded Age” in order to gain access to the top 400. But nobody comes. A confidant explains to Bertha why she is seen as an enemy: “You are the future, and if you are the future, you are the past. That scares them.”
“The Gilded Age” makes one fear that this also applies a little to Julian Fellowes. Nevertheless: The second season is already in preparation.