Courtesy of HBO/Karolina Wojtasik When “The Gilded Age” premiered in 2022, the reception was warm enough. The HBO costume drama marked creator Julian Fellowes’ highly anticipated follow-up to “Downton Abbey,” bringing his eye for aristocratic quirks across the Atlantic and delivering the requisite dose of upstairs-downstairs intrigue. But the low-stakes pleasures of selecting silverware and competing opera houses could be a double-edged sword. The series was always enjoyable, but it wasn’t must-see TV.
Then, as its third season rolled out last year, “The Gilded Age” experienced the kind of reversal that could be a storyline on the show, where fortunes are made and lost overnight as America invents itself on the fly.
First came the memes, dubbing a railroad tycoon “Train Daddy” and an enterprising inventor “Clock Twink.” (In another show of cultural soft power, the cast of “The Real Housewives: Ultimate Girls Trip” threw a “The Gilded Age”-themed costume party in the most recent season finale.) Then the ratings, which confirmed the phenomenon wasn’t an online mirage: Every episode in the season’s second half set viewership records, culminating in a finale that earned 5 million viewers in three days — an 88% increase over the premiere. Finally, Season 3 received eight Emmy nominations, more than both its predecessors combined.
Christine Baranski, (L) and Cynthia Nixon in “The Gilded Age” HBO/Karolina Wojtasik But nobody knows “The Gilded Age” has hit the big time better than the people who make it. “We turned some sort of corner,” says Fellowes. Morgan Spector, who plays robber baron George Russell (aka Train Daddy), agrees: “It felt like we broke containment.” And Denée Benton, whose budding writer Peggy Scott acts as an entry point into New York’s prosperous Black elite, still sounds astonished. “We were such a slow burn,” Benton says. “All of a sudden, our show was this pop culture hit!”
In a contracting entertainment landscape well past the apex of Peak TV, it’s rare for any show with production values as high as those of “The Gilded Age” — which films in New York City— to last through a third season in the first place.Even rarer is a series seizing on the opportunity to make a quantum leap several years into its run. But “The Gilded Age” returns for Season 4 on Nov. 1 a conquering hero — and a testament to what can happen when a story gets the time and space to come into its own.
“The Gilded Age” introduced itself as a tale of social disruption: When George and his equally ambitious wife, Bertha (Carrie Coon), move into a Manhattan mansion in the early 1880s, their arrival is a seismic event that upends the city’s hidebound establishment. Season 4 builds on a strong foundation to escalate the action further. Its mix of escapist fantasy and emotional substance has never felt more dialed in, nor the political relevance of staggering income inequality and meddlesome tycoons more pronounced. A subplot about anti-monopoly legislation will play out in the shadow of HBO’s assimilation into the new Skydance Corp., the result of a merger that faced a challenge on antitrust grounds from multiple state attorneys general. The echo isn’t intentional, but not a coincidence either — it’s proof of how deeply “The Gilded Age” has tapped into the zeitgeist.
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