Roush Review: Return to HBO’s Gorgeously Rendered ‘Gilded Age’

The Gilded Age

Matt's Rating:

“SOUP? At LUNCHEON?”

No one does high, apoplectic dudgeon with the verve of Christine Baranski, who as New York dragon lady Agnes Van Rhijn erupts after her timid spinster sister Ada (Cynthia Nixon) dares to present clam chowder as a daytime treat to a smitten reverend (Robert Sean Leonard) from Boston. The very idea!

And don’t get her started on her good-natured niece Marian (Louisa Jacobson) taking a job teaching watercolors at a local girls’ school on Thursdays. “The day is immaterial,” Agnes snorts in derision. Does she back down when Marian calls her out as mean-spirited? Hardly. “Is it cruel to mind it when you stomp on our name and drag it in the mud? Now get out of my way!”

Gladly. Welcome back to the rarefied world of The Gilded Age, Julian Fellowes’ entertaining yet shallow attempt to re-create a Downton Abbey vibe in the mansions of 1880s society, where the vulgar nouveaux riches continue to make aggressive inroads. Chief antagonist in this class conflict is robber-baron wife Bertha Russell (a stiff Carrie Coon), who sparks a seemingly never-ending “Opera War” by promoting the upstart Metropolitan Opera over the established but unwelcoming Academy of Music, the pet cause of old-money A-lister Mrs. Astor (Donna Murphy). Caught between both worlds is social arbiter Ward McAllister, embodied by an outrageously hammy Nathan Lane in one of his less convincing performances.

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The stakes couldn’t be lower or sillier in Season 2 — I couldn’t help laugh when industrialist George Russell (Morgan Spector) takes a break from his efforts at union-busting to chide wife Bertha, “You’re being jejune” during one of her pouts — but the production values couldn’t be higher. Best to ignore the simpering self-righteousness of the show’s stubbornly bland younger characters and shrug off the tepid intrigues of the underwritten downstairs staff (many portrayed by Broadway royalty). Just luxuriate in the costumes, staggering interiors, and barbed banter of the upper class as fortunes rise and fall amid scandal and tragedy.

Now pardon me while I go get some soup for lunch.

The Gilded Age, Season 2 Premiere, Sunday, October 29, 9/8c, HBO