As most people who know me know, I am a history buff. I have been anxiously awaiting ‘The Gilded Age’ series for well over a year since I found out it was being made. Binge watching Bridgerton and Downton Abbey have made me crave this one about the early days in my home town of New York.

“For a New Yorker, anything is possible.”

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). 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 social divide is at the heart of both Julian Fellowes’ (Downton Abbey) upcoming HBO series and its trailer, which gives us a good sense of the period drama’s key players. Among them are George Russell (The Plot Against America‘s Morgan Spector) and wife Bertha (The Leftovers‘ Carrie Coon), whose entry into polite society is met with scorn and some serious side-eye; Peggy Scott (UnREAL‘s Denée Benton), an aspiring writer who befriends Marian; Dorothy Scott (The Good Fight‘s Audra McDonald, who in the trailer is suspicious of the hospitality bestowed upon Peggy; and Ada Brook (Sex and the City‘s Cynthia Nixon), Agnes’ kind but dim sister,

The Gilded Age debuts Monday January 24 on HBO and will be available to stream on HBO Max.

Please take a look and let me know what you think.