Forget Downton Abbey and Bridgerton. This is the period drama you need in your life

The Age

20 hours ago

Time travel doesn't exist yet, and let's be honest, if it did, humans couldn't be trusted to use it responsibly. Thankfully we have television, able to transport us back in time to a world before television. To a time when cars were horses, and jeans were the distant dream of someone trapped in a corset.
And there are certainly a lot of televisual time machines floating around out there these days. Since the success of Downton Abbey, Julian Fellowes' historical drama following the lives of the aristocratic Crawley family and their domestic servants in the early 20th century, we have officially been living in the age of scandalous prestige period drama. And what a time to be alive!
In the wake of Downton Abbey, TV has gone all in on luxurious sets, fabulous old-timey clothes, and giant casts of people far sexier than you'll ever find depicted in some dusty oil painting. The historical accuracy is rarely (read: never) the point: we're after big costumes, big mansions, big betrayals and big reactions, preferably in an accent that actors probably call 'Olden Days'.
They come in all styles, united through the inherent melodrama and wondrous escapism of watching rich people suffer rich people problems. Some are overly self-serious (Wolf Hall), some are utter schlock (The Tudors). Some prioritise romance (Victoria), others the potent cocktail of humour and violence (The Great). Some go for opulence and spectacle: The Crown was famously one of the most expensive shows ever made. And others crank the sex appeal up to 11, a smorgasbord of witty repartee and semi-nudity: ahem, Bridgerton; ahem, Mary & George.
But one period drama on television right now outdoes them all. It's ambitious, lavish, provocative and utterly engrossing. It has also flown under the radar, lost in the maelstrom of shows set in the histrionic days of yore. Julian Fellowes' follow-up to Downton Abbey is even better than its predecessor. It just aired its third season on HBO; in Australia, it streams on Paramount+. It is called The Gilded Age.
The Gilded Age is set in New York City, during the boom years of the 1880s. It primarily follows the trials and tribulations of two extremely rich families – the 'new money' Russell family, whose patriarch George is a ruthless business tycoon and ambitious futurist, and the 'old money' Van Rhijn-Brook family, whose wealth has been inherited over generations and who refuse to accept these new-timey industrialists into their exclusive society.
When approached without irony, a show about the rich and royal quibbling over etiquette and reputation can become tiresome quickly (looking at you, The Crown). But by moving the setting from an old country estate in England to the bustling streets of a booming New York, Fellowes presents a world slightly more recognisable to us modern plebs, and therefore ripe for satire.
In the reality we live in, where the pettiness and trifles of the obscenely rich are the catalyst for so many of the world's ills, there is a joy in seeing that entitled upper crust confined to their ballrooms and mansions, where their rivalries and game-playing are pure spectacle, rather than likely to bring about the fall of civilisation. It's riveting and hilarious, rather than terrifying and depressing.