2 days ago
- Entertainment
- Washington Post
In its third season, ‘The Gilded Age' is as staid and sudsy as ever
'The Gilded Age,' by virtue of its focus on moneyed late-19th-century decorum, is the current HBO drama that hews most closely to network broadcast standards. Indeed, the show was originally tipped for NBC before it got a Bertha Russell-approved status glow-up to the premium cable streamer. But while it eschews the brutality of HBO's reputation-burnishing series such as 'The Sopranos' or 'Game of Thrones,' it induces similar ethical cartwheels in the viewer. We're invited to cheer the victories of an amoral robber baron and his Machiavellian wife, whose campaign to conquer the old-money battlements of 1880s New York forms the overarching narrative of the series.
