Sumptuous period drama The Gilded Age comes to Virgin TV

Let us take you back in time, a century and a half or so. Imagine a society in which the super-rich are obsessed with status, reputation and displays of wealth, while largely ignoring the ordinary people who are left with the everyday tasks that allow the moneyed classes to function. Um… completely different from today then. Right?

That’s the beauty of The Gilded Age – it may be set among the upper echelons of New York society in the 1880s, but we can recognise the class clashes and simmering resentments that continue today. But the big plus is we get to do that while goggling at incredibly opulent interiors and flamboyantly gorgeous dresses.

Get ready to gorge on some sumptuous period drama, then, because seasons 1 and 2 of The Gilded Age will be available in On Demand at no extra cost from Friday 23 May – the first time this terrific series has been available to Virgin TV customers, and you can also watch it in crystal-clear ultra HD. And that should give you just enough time to binge your way through all 17 episodes ahead of the new season, which begins on Monday 23 June at 9pm on Sky Showcase HD (CH 109).

It’s 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. 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, as nouveau-riche Bertha Russell; Cynthia Nixon, the Sex And The City standout who sinks her teeth into a terrific role as sharp-tongued spinster Ada Brook; and Christine Baranski, who played Diane Lockhart over 13 seasons of The Good Wife and The Good Fight and is also known for Mamma Mia!, as old-money matriarch Agnes van Rhijn.

Morgan Spector (Homeland) is George Russell, industrialist husband of Bertha, and 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 but 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. 

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.

You can stream all episodes of The Gilded Age seasons 1 and 2 from Friday 23 May in On Demand > Sky Showcase. Season 3 of the show begins on Monday 23 June at 9pm on Sky Showcase HD (CH 109) and will also be available on demand.