The way I get out of my head—and the machinations of my current work-in-progress—is to decompress with a couple of hours of television after dinner. When it first came out in 2022 on HBO Max, Martin and I watched The Gilded Age, a television saga that takes place in the era so beautifully rendered in novels by Henry James, Edith Wharton, and Kazuo Ishiguro.
Because we learned a third season is currently in production, we decided to revisit it this past month. I'm so glad we did! Its writer-producer, Julian Fellowes, is also the mastermind behind the equally opulent Downtown Abbey, which is a favorite of everyone in our family.
In fact, when that TV show ended and two films were later produced, my family banded together to see them at the movies, like most of the rest of the world.
In my opinion, Fellowes struck gold a second time with The Gilded Age. His leap over the pond with a saga taking place at a time when the United States dominated the Industrial Era is just as rich in story, characters, and settings. This time, it's a tale about New York's “old families”—also known as “the Four Hundred”—learning to live with the nouveau riche interlopers who changed the metropolis' century-old status quo.
Even the opening credits are worth sitting through to watch exquisite architectural details, emblematic of the period's great mansions on the New York's Fifth Avenue, morph from one to another. It reminds me of the opening scene in one of my favorite movies: Martin Scorsese's Age of Innocence (which is an adaptation of the Wharton novel by that name).
And don't get me started on the costumes! Not only are they beautiful and there is a great attention to detail, but according to this video produced by Glamor Magazine, they are mostly accurate.
