Enter a new era of The Gilded Age on Virgin TV

We can’t get enough of The Gilded Age, the superbly written and wonderfully performed period drama set among the upper echelons of New York society in the 1880s. That’s partly because it's packed with the kind of class clashes and simmering resentments that continue today, and partly because we love gawping at opulent interiors and flamboyant dresses. The box set of seasons 1 and 2 dropped last month, and we took the opportunity to gorge on it greedily.

And there’s fantastic news for fans, because season 3 is heading our way this month! You can watch new episodes of The Gilded Age from Monday 23 June at 9pm on Sky Showcase HD (CH 109).

Without giving too much away for those who haven’t watched it all yet, the end of season 2 saw a major power shift that could change everything in the new season. Ambition and wealth will always matter, whether you have them or you don’t. And the trailer hints that there could be even more serious upheaval ahead! Watch it at your own risk…

With new additions to the cast and new storylines that promise to weave in the radical politics of the time, it’s set to be another excellent season of drama – and it’s going to look amazing too, because it’s available to watch in crystal-clear ultra HD for those with compatible TVs.

The Gilded Age is the absorbing story of rich and poor, new money versus old money, and the challenges faced by different people at a time of huge economic and social upheaval in the US. With a member of writing royalty behind the series and a top-notch, award-winning cast, not to mention all those fabulous sets, it’s a show to luxuriate in. Want a breakdown of the reasons to watch it? Right this way…

It’s no surprise that The Gilded Age won a Screen Actors Guild award for best ensemble cast in a drama series – for a start, it’s led by three absolute powerhouses. Carrie Coon, who emerged from a minor role to become the star of unsettling drama The Leftovers and has since been wonderful in Fargo, Widows, His Three Daughters and season 3 of The White Lotus, plays nouveau-riche Bertha Russell. Cynthia Nixon (Sex And The City) sinks her teeth into a terrific role as sharp-tongued spinster Ada Brook. Christine Baranski, who played Diane Lockhart over 13 seasons of The Good Wife and The Good Fight and is also known for Mamma Mia!, is perfection as old-money matriarch Agnes van Rhijn.

Morgan Spector (Homeland) is George Russell, industrialist husband of Bertha, and Aussie actor Harry Richardson (Poldark) plays their son Larry. Then there’s acting royalty in the form of Lousia Jacobson (daughter of Meryl Streep) as Marian Brook – a high-born young woman whose lack of funds forces her to live with her estranged, rich aunts. Below stairs, butler Alfred Bannister is played by Simon Jones (Arthur Dent in the 1980s TV adaptation of The Hitchhiker’s Guide To The Galaxy), while Tony Award winner and NYPD Blue star Debra Monk is a sarcastic maid. 

And there are exciting new additions to the cast for season 3. Among them are Bill Camp, who starred in Netflix’s Zero Day and was in The Leftovers alongside Coon, will star as banker JP Morgan, and Merritt Wever (Nurse Jackie) as Bertha’s sister Monica. LisaGay Hamilton (The Practice) plays inspiring real-life suffragist Frances Ellen Watkins Harper, and Andrea Martin – a castmate of Baranski’s in The Good Fight – appears as a medium. As in, she talks to the dead. Supposedly…

Julian Fellowes won an Oscar for writing the stately-home murder-mystery movie Gosford Park and also scripted a 2004 adaptation of Vanity Fair (starring Reese Witherspoon) and The Young Victoria. On TV, he wrote ITV1’s Belgravia and Doctor Thorne as well as Netflix’s The Beautiful Game. But there’s no doubt he’s best known for Downton Abbey, the megahit period drama that ran from 2010-2015 on TV and is still going strong on screen with a new film due out this year.

If you want someone to write your script about rich people in the 19th and early 20th centuries, Fellowes – or The Right Honourable The Lord Fellowes of West Stafford to give him his proper title – is undoubtedly your man, and The Gilded Age is jam-packed with his signatures like class interaction and poshos faced with poverty.

The Russells and Van Rhijns are representative of the families who dominated New York society at the time, but The Gilded Age also includes some real-life figures. Caroline Schermerhorn Astor (Broadway star Donna Murphy, who voiced Mother Gothel in Tangled) was the queen bee who developed “Mrs Astor’s 400” – the list of “acceptable” New York families. Guest star Nathan Lane (The Producers) portrays Ward McAllister, the highly cultured and magnificently moustached Southern gent who was closely associated with Mrs Astor.

Other historical people include T Thomas Fortune (Sullivan Jones, Elsbeth), a former slave who studied at Harvard and became one of the leading Black voices of the 19th century, scandalous socialite Arabella Huntington who inspired character Sylvia Chamberlain (Jeanne Tripplehorn, Mrs America) and architect to the affluent Stanford White (John Sanders, Iron Fist).

The Gilded Age snagged an Emmy Award for production design and it’s easy to see why – the sets are appropriately dazzling, reflecting the money (old and new) washing around New York in the late 19th century. The designers use some grand buildings still standing from the era, while also creating eye-boggling interiors with flair. The design can also be telling: the lavish opulence of the up-and-coming Russells’ home contrasts with the elegant but smaller house where the Van Rhijns live, making it clear why the establishment family resents the arrivistes without a word of dialogue required.

Like Downton Abbey, The Gilded Age portrays both the wealthy “upstairs” people and the ordinary “downstairs” folk who facilitate their lives but, of course, have their own desires, struggles and triumphs.  For example, housemaid Bridget (Taylor Richardson) is traumatised by abuse, but begins to recover under the care of cook Mrs Bauer (Kristine Nielsen).

It also addresses themes many period dramas have overlooked, such as the social mobility of Black people in the post-Civil War period: Peggy (Denée Benton) works as Agnes’s secretary but has ambitions to be a journalist, encouraged by her successful parents (John Douglas Thompson and Audra McDonald). Blake Ritson plays Oscar, scion of the Van Rhijn family, who is on the lookout for a wife to safeguard his future but finds it hard to overcome his attraction to men.

The new third season of The Gilded Age begins on Monday 23 June at 9pm on Sky Showcase HD (CH 109) and is available in Ultra HD. You can stream all episodes of seasons 1 and 2 in On Demand > Sky Showcase now.