The Gilded Age review: Sumptuous period drama feels a bit like Downton New York
The Gilded Age:Â Louisa Jacobson - daughter of Meryl Streep - plays Marian Brook.
There’s nothing like a sumptuous period drama to comfort and entertain — from Upstairs Downstairs to Bridgerton, the appeal of immersing oneself in the low-stakes shenanigans of a far-removed generation is timeless. While it lost its mojo in later seasons, one of the best of the bunch was the phenomenally successful Downton Abbey. Its creator Julian Fellowes is now back with The Gilded Age, which, while set a whole continent away in New York is, in many other aspects, very much Downton Abbey on the Hudson.
There’s also more than a whiff of (Edith) Wharton in the air, as Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson), left impoverished by her father’s death, arrives from rural Pennsylvania to 1880s New York to live with her wealthy aunts, Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) and Ada Brook (Miranda Nixon). Baranski and Nixon are excellent, as ever, and Jacobson holds her own, perhaps not surprising given she is from acting royalty herself, as the daughter of Hollywood’s reigning queen Meryl Streep.
