TV: The Gilded Age. Created by Julian Fellowes, 2022, HBO

Julian Fellows tried to pull a Jane Austen or an Edith Wharton – unsuccessfully. He did not even emulate his own previous win, “Downton Abbey”…

A mix of bachelors and bachelorettes does not necessarily make a good TV series recipe. It is a recipe anyway, but for a show that can be watched while crocheting (that is for people who crochet). This much Julian Fellowes has achieved. I found it more entertaining to count how many times the characters use variations of the phrase “I am going upstairs to change”, “I need to change”, “Aren’t you going to change”, etc, etc. instead of following some of the supposedly feisty dialogue of the female characters.

In general, all the characters wear their convictions or beliefs on subjects like money (new and old), equality, race, love, etc. on their sleeves – like badges. So, the dialogue can be replaced by just characters flashing their badges at each other – “hey, I am a prejudiced old snob”, “hey I am an early bird feminist”, and so on. Not a very engaging action to watch. All this is interspersed with historical curiosities about the Doylestown rail or the Statue of Liberty. Wouldn’t you rather watch a proper historical documentary? The other recipe that worked before for Julian Fellowes – “upstairs-downstairs”, masters and servants, is so trite and inorganic to the plot that you could just hit the FF button without missing any of the action, whatever that could be.

In other words, Baron Fellowes is slipping us a fake.