TV

"The Golden Age": The new series from the creator of "Downton Mansion" is like its American sister

The mechanics of the "Golden Age" are known for a variety of other period soaps - class stories, intrigues of servants, cross-layered love stories, etc. Nevertheless, the new series has an essential element that gives it freshness and interest: the historical aspect

Ido Yeshayahu

26/01/2022

Wednesday, January 26, 2022, 00:00

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Trailer for the series "The Golden Age" (HBO)

Julian Floz really likes stories of a very particular kind.

The British creator is behind, among other things, the script for the film "Gosford Park" (a drama of masters and servants that culminates in murder), the beloved series "Downton Mansion" (about the disintegration of classes in the early 20th century in Britain), and the mini-series "Titanic" (about the fate of The passengers are derived according to their status) and "Belgravia", which is even based on a book he wrote (about two families from different classes whose fate was linked 25 years after the Battle of Waterloo).

Now, believe it or not, he's back with a new series about classes, masters and servants.

Floz crosses the Atlantic this time in favor of "The Gilded Age," the new series he created for HBO and takes place in 1882 in New York.

Bertha and George Russell (Carrie Conn, "The Remainers," and Morgan Spector, "The Conspiracy Against America") move with their family to their new home on prestigious 61st Street in Manhattan - a magnificent palace built under the noses of the city's haters, the old and rigid Guard, through fortune A huge profit from the rising train business.

All that Mrs. Russell aspires to is to join the shaman and salta of New York, which proves to be a complex task in the face of the crowding of the rows of ladies standing in front of her;

While Mr. Russell worked on installing railroad tracks and a new station in the city, which also ran into problems on the part of local politicians, the spouses of those snobbish women.

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Ambition that knows no bounds.

Carrie Cone as Bertha Russell, "The Golden Age" (Photo: Alison Cohen Rosa / HBO)

Toughness bordering on cruelty.

Morgan Spector as George Russell, "The Golden Age" (Photo: Alison Cohen Rosa / HBO)

Right in front of their new home lives such a snob, widow Agnes van Rijn (Christine Baranski, "The Best of the Battle") along with her kind-hearted single sister Ida (Cynthia Nixon, "Sex and the City").

Joining them is her nephew Marian Brock (Louisa Jacobson, daughter of Meryl Streep, who looks more like her two actress sisters, Grace and Mimi Gamer), who was left destitute after her father's death in Pennsylvania.

Peggy Scott (Dana Benton), a young and educated young woman who aspires to make a living from writing, also comes to town with her.

This is just a small part of the character fan deployed in the new series, which is very reminiscent of the old series.

"Downton Mansion" became a huge hit, garnered awards and accolades, and even after it ended in 2015 it gained new life on the cinema screen in 2019, and with a second film expected to be released in about two months.

"The Golden Age" is largely a duplication of it, and no wonder.

Originally, back in 2012, she acted as a daughter series of "Downton" that was supposed to trace the story of the acquaintance of Lord Grantham, later the Count, and American heiress Cora (Hugh Dancy and Elizabeth McGovern in the original series).

Their characters may have been dropped from the story in the end, but the sticks of "Downton" and the plethora of other works written by Pluz are present in full force.

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Snobbish.

Christine Baranski as Agnes van Rijn, "The Golden Age" (Photo: Alison Cohen Rosa / HBO)

Kind.

Cynthia Nixon as Ida Brock, "The Golden Age" (Photo: Alison Cohen Rosa / HBO)

"It sounds like a melodrama," one character says to another in one of the episodes of "The Golden Age" after describing a maid's plot.

A line that, while showing humor and self-awareness, does not detract from the truth of the definition in a genre that has long been ground to a pulp.

Again the soapy hardships of masters and servants against the backdrop of tectonic changes in the rules of the familiar classes, intrigues on the upper and lower floors, servants undermining their employers, the good souls navigating amid intrigues, cross-layered and hostile loves, and so on and so forth.

Pluz's fingerprints are evident on everything in this series, and the problem is that what was delightful and refreshing a decade ago (or fifty years ago, when it came "on masters and servants"), has become worn and familiar at this point.

But the same fingerprints are also embodied in all the benefits that have made Floz such a successful writer.

He has already proven his great talent for weaving a ramified story with masses of characters in all of whom he breathes life into - not for nothing did he win an Oscar for "Gosford Park."

Even in the "Golden Age" he is marvelous at describing the nuances of the intrigue between the various classes.

Veteran New Yorkers - those whose families have inhabited Manhattan since the British conquered it from the Dutch - despise the new ones, but may welcome a young black to their home.

A maid who worked for a veteran family in it herself to her ambitious nouveau riche mistress.

The young people who are not really interested in their parents' aspirations or social restrictions.

On the contrary, they are interested in paving the way for themselves (relying on family capital, of course).

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Similar to her sisters.

Louisa Jacobson, "The Golden Age" (Photo: Alison Cohen Rosa / HBO)

There are so many conflicting views and perspectives in the "Golden Age," and she arranges them and juggles them with a confident and intriguing hand.

Kitschy and clichéd as some of its plot lines may be, they still carry strings that are hard to resist.

In addition, as required by the eye-popping richness of its protagonists, the series abounds in splendor, the sets are spectacular and the period reconstruction is astonishing.

The latter is in fact the greatest strength of the "Golden Age".

As much as the mechanics in it are familiar from Ploz's previous works and a host of other period soaps, the historical aspect of the new series is fresh, meticulous and fascinating.

Starting with a focus primarily on female perspectives, including the black bourgeois class in the decades after the Civil War, through a peek into the cradle of American icons (the hand of the Statue of Liberty is placed in Central Park before the rest of the statue arrives; And ending with the grammar of the differences between American and British table manners.

As further evidence of Pluz's skill, it's much more entertaining than it sounds.

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Symbols of corrupt capitalism.

The Golden Age (Photo: Alison Cohen Rosa / HBO)

Like "Downton Mansion," the "Golden Age" opens at a point in time of great change, the decline of the old order and the beginning of a new one.

It's always fun to see the old order broken, especially when it's done defiantly as Bertha and George Russell do.

The series does well to weave these changes and the way they shake small lives into the lives of New York veterans, personalities no one remembers today, and slowly stumble upon names like JPMorgan, Rockefeller and the series' fictional protagonists.

This is the big difference that still exists between the two series: the couple at the center of "The Golden Age" are far from being good lovers like Robert and Cora Crowley.

vice versa.

Bertha's ambition knows no bounds and George's business toughness is repeatedly bordered on cruelty.

Although the series paints them in human and seemingly complex colors, it is difficult not to see them as the creation of pig, corrupt, exploitative and predatory capitalism.

Symbols of tycoons who, although they came from want and built themselves with their own hands, created dynasties of impenetrable and all-encompassing privilege.

One that is most evident in HBO's current flagship series.

The "Golden Age" is far from being "heirs," in any sense.

She is not as sophisticated as she is, not layered, and unlike her shows much more heart and faith in humanity.

However, and despite the constant echo of Pluz's previous great work - after the five episodes submitted for review (out of nine), "The Golden Age" is interesting,

"The Golden Age" airs every Tuesday on Bite, Hot and Cellcom TV.

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