For the costume series, the golden age never seems to run out.
Why is the public still passionate about period drama in which wonderful dresses with corsets, laden tables, sumptuous dances or palace intrigues dominate?
Basically we still seek or believe in fairy tales, even if the chronicles tell us how feuds, betrayals, wars have always been hidden behind smiles (even if saying this word seems like a disrespectful sacrilege).
To prove it, the success of series like Bridgerton, among the most viewed on Netflix (fans are in a state of excitement for the second season, arriving from March 25 with new intrigues and new loves), or sagas like The Crown (coming the fifth season in November).
Also highly anticipated is the film Downton Abbey 2: A New Era: in cinemas from April 28,
written by Oscar winner Julian Fellowes and directed by Simon Curtis, it comes after the great success of the TV series that ended in 2015 with the sixth season and of the 2019 feature film. But equally expected on March 21 on Sky Serie, on demand on Sky and in streaming on Now, The Gilded Age, period drama by Hbo.
Already renewed for a second season, this series is also signed by Sir Julian Fellowes, an institution in the field of period dramas who, after outlining the vices and virtues of the English nobility of the early 1900s first (Downton Abbey) and the first then half of the 19th century (Belgravia), transports us now to the American golden age of the late nineteenth century, right at the center of the conflict between tradition and modernity, with the new bourgeoisie increasingly in the limelight also thanks to
advance of the technological achievements that marked those years.
If tradition is embodied by the intransigent and proud heiress Agnes van Rhijn, played by Christine Baranski, backed up by her sister Ada Brook (Cynthia Nixon), modernity has the flashy semblance of the very rich middle-class couple played by Morgan Spector and Carrie Coon, who have just moved in a brand new and luxurious building a few meters from the historic home of the two sisters.
In the middle is the protagonist of this story, who has the face of Louisa Jacobson Gummer: Marion Brook, the unfortunate niece of Agnes and Ada who will find herself in spite of herself, together with the aspiring writer Peggy Scott (Denée Benton), in the middle of a quarrel between the aunts and the new, rampant neighbors.
In the cast also Taissa Farmiga, Blake Ritson, Simon Jones,
Harry Richardson, Thomas Cocquerel and Jack Gilpin.
Eyes on the protagonist Louisa Jacobson: she is the youngest daughter of her majesty Meryl Streep.
The daughter of art, she plays the role of the young Marian who will be forced to reach the Big Apple starting from the Pennsylvania countryside.
New World society is in turmoil and increasingly polarized, between new rich and old social patterns.
Marian, orphan of a Southern general, will move to her aunts Agnes and Ada in New York.
She will find herself in a new context, with the huge economic disparities affecting the city in the background, she will make her way into high society even with the help of a successful peer, Peggy Scott, an African American woman whom she passes she like her nanny of hers.
Christine Baranski plays Agnes van Rhijn, an aristocratic widow,
stubborn and proud who does not accept the fact that the world has changed.
It is inconceivable to her that old values are supplanted by new ideals that she does not recognize.
Cintia Nixon is Ada Brook, another victim of the collapse of the Southern system, just like her sister.
Unlike the latter, she did not find a way to get out of financial straits in time: she did not get married.
So she is financially dependent on Ada's charity.
Inadvertently, the young Marian will get caught up in the social feuds between one of her aunts (with a decidedly retrograde mentality) and her very wealthy neighbors.
In this case Fellowes wants to up the ante, on the other hand to match a figure of the caliber of Maggie Smith, voice of the last bastion of nobility and tradition in Downton Abbey, it is not said that two artists are enough,
