'The Gilded Age' shines as an American plot of 'Downton Abbey'-adjacent real estate

The parallels between "The Gilded Age" and Julian Fellowes' earlier creation "Downton Abbey" aren't hard to spot, which doesn't make this HBO drama any less delicious. Set in the moneyed corridors of New York during the 1880s, Fellowes and his sprawling cast have delivered another sharp look at wealth and class in earlier times, when even those with the gold chafed against the intricate rules.

The backdrop here lies not in British aristocracy but rather the hostility of old-money families toward what they dismissively refer to as "the new people," those who have recently come into fortunes but lack the arrived-on-the-Mayflower claims to elite status.

That intra-class warfare and the ostentatious displays of wealth associated with it are viewed in part through the wide eyes of a new arrival, Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson, the youngest of Meryl Streep's talented acting daughters), who, after the death of her father, travels from rural Pennsylvania to reside with her two aunts, the imperious Agnes van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) and mousier Ada Brook (Cynthia Nixon).