If you’re still looking for a new show to fill that Downton Abbey-shaped hole in your heart, HBO might just have a solution for you. Created by Downton Abbey‘s Julian Fellowes, The Gilded Age is the latest historical drama to hit the streaming service and — based on its first trailer — already promises to be every bit as tense, lavish, and addicting as the former PBS series.
Unlike Downton Abbey, however, The Gilded Age is set in 1880s America — during the second industrial revolution. As for what the series will be about, HBO has released a lengthy description that already has us on the edge of our seats:
“The American Gilded Age was a period of immense economic change, of great conflict between the old ways and brand new systems, and of huge fortunes made and lost. Against the backdrop of this transformation, HBO’s The Gilded Age begins in 1882 with young Marian Brook (Jacobson) moving from rural Pennsylvania to New York City after the death of her father to live with her thoroughly old money aunts Agnes van Rhijn (Baranski) and Ada Brook (Nixon). Accompanied by Peggy Scott (Benton), an aspiring writer seeking a fresh start, Marian inadvertently becomes enmeshed in a social war between one of her aunts, a scion of the old money set, and her stupendously rich neighbors, a ruthless railroad tycoon and his ambitious wife, George (Spector) and Bertha Russell (Coon). Exposed to a world on the brink of the modern age, will Marian follow the established rules of society, or forge her own path?”
The series will run for nine episodes, and features an ensemble cast of Carrie Coon, Morgan Spector, Denée Benton, Louisa Jacobson, Taissa Farmiga, Blake Ritson, Simon Jones, Harry Richardson, Thomas Cocquerel and Jack Gilpin, with Cynthia Nixon, Christine Baranski, and dozens more. In addition to being created by Fellowes, the prolific author and showrunner will also be writing and executive producing The Gilded Age alongside Sonja Warfield (She-Ra and the Princesses of Power). The series is set to premiere on HBO on January 24, 2022.