HBO’s ‘Downton Abbey’ Replacement Is Officially a No. 1 Global Sensation

Exotic costumes, power plays, inter- and intra-family feuds are some of the hallmarks that make period dramas stand out. Networks and streaming services consistently come up with compelling storylines which elevate the bar. From Bridgerton to The Crown to Outlander, all helped stage a resurgence while pulling its audiences ever deeper into the crevices of its expertly crafted plots. While HBO might be king of prestige television with its acclaimed Westerosi-themed universe, the network has an A-list standard-bearer for period dramas.

In September 2010, Downton Abbey premiered and perfected the art of period dramas to suit its modern audience. Upon its conclusion in 2015, the series was arguably left without a strong successor till Netflix’s flagship series, Bridgerton, came on half a decade later to enormous success. But HBO had an answer to the Shondaland series, one with a premise that is still quite familiar in the modern world: classism. HBO’s The Gilded Age, created by Julian Fellowes, who also created and co-wrote Downton Abbey, premiered in 2022 and in its three seasons — with a fourth season just premiering — tells the story of wealthy, established families in New York in the 19th century, seeking to bar the entrance into upper society of newly wealthy families.

Season 3 of The Gilded Age concluded almost in a state of flux, as it left the fate of major characters, emotionally and otherwise, in the balance. Season 4 premiered on November 1, and the period drama’s return has once reiterated its claim as the successor show to Fellowes’ Downton Abbey. Per FlixPatrol, upon its return, The Gilded Age has become a global streaming sensation, climbing to the top of the charts in over 40 countries, including the United Kingdom and the U.S. This early success is record-breaking, as it has become the most-watched season premiere yet, averaging nearly 4 million viewers across platforms, according HBO.

Four love stories, four completely different ideas of what it means to
be somebody’s person. This is the one that matches how you actually fall, and what it would ask of
you.

You do not fall for strangers. You fall for the person you have
already been talking to for years, which is the slowest and by some distance the most
durable way anybody has found to do this.

• When Harry Met Sally made the case that the best romance is an argument you enjoy,
  conducted over a decade, by two people refusing to admit what is happening.
• You want to be known rather than swept away. Somebody who remembers your worst story is
  doing better work than anybody arriving with flowers.
• The film is unusually honest about timing. These two are wrong for each other repeatedly
  until suddenly they are not, and neither of them engineered it.
• You would still be talking about everything at eighty. That is the entire promise.

You want a partner, not an audience. Somebody who wants their own
life as badly as you want yours, and who would never ask you to be smaller to make the
relationship easier.

• This is the rare romance where both people have a real career and the film takes both of
  them equally seriously.
• You would rather be pushed than protected. The right person for you is also a bit of a
  rival, and that never entirely goes away.
• It understands the actual problem in ambitious relationships. Not whether you love each
  other, but whose turn it is this year.
• You would still be competing at forty. That is how you would know it was working.

The intensity was never the problem. The secrecy is. You are
drawn to a love that lives entirely in private, and to the particular ache of wanting
somebody you are not supposed to want.

• Heated Rivalry runs on the oldest engine in romance: two people on opposite sides,
  meeting in secret, getting far more attached than either of them planned.
• You keep your private life genuinely private, and something in you finds hidden things
  more real than public ones.
• The tension is not only between the two of them. It is between what they have and what
  it would cost either one to say it out loud.
• Years of this, and the whole story is really about whether either of them will finally
  stop hiding.

You do not do this cautiously. When it happens for you it is
immediate and total and it rearranges everything, and you would not accept a smaller version
of it.

• Titanic gave us the biggest romance in film history and then made it last about five
  days, which is precisely the point of it.
• You measure love by intensity rather than duration. A few days of the real thing beats
  decades of something merely comfortable.
• The film is not only about the romance. It is about a woman who went on to live an
  enormous life afterwards because of it.
• You would still be telling this story at a hundred years old, and telling it exactly the
  same way.

Who Stars in ‘The Gilded Age’?

• Image via HBO

• Image credit via HBO.

• Image via HBO

• Image via Apple TV

• Image via HBO

• Image via HBO

• Image credit via HBO.

• Image via HBO

• Image via Apple TV

• Image via HBO

While Fellowes brings his Downton Abbey expertise to the party, the creator requires the right tools to execute. The cast of The Gilded Age suit those needs effectively, with Carrie Coon (The Leftovers) as Bertha Russell and Morgan Spector (The Plot Against America) as George Russell. The dedication to excellence, year-on-year, was reflected in consistent positive reviews even in the third season. Season 3 holds a near-perfect, series-high 96% rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

The rest of the cast includes Louisa Jacobson as Marian Brook, Denée Benton as Peggy Scott, Christine Baranski (The Good Fight) as Agnes van Rhijn, Cynthia Nixon (Sex and the City) as Ada Brook, Taissa Farmiga as Gladys Russell, Harry Richardson as Larry Russell, Blake Ritson as Oscar van Rhijn, Ben Ahlers as Jack Treacher, and Donna Murphy as Mrs. Astor.

The Gilded Age Season 4 is streaming on HBO Max with new episodes on Sundays.

The Gilded Age