'The Gilded Age' review: Drama from 'Downton Abbey' creator is  fantasy, not history lesson

WHAT IT'S ABOUT Agnes Van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) and her sister Ada Brook (Cynthia Nixon) look on in dismay as a huge mansion goes up across from their more modest one on 61st Street. In 1882, new money is flowing into Manhattan along with the newly rich, including railroad baron George Russell (Morgan Spector) and his ambitious wife Bertha (Carrie Coon), who are building this monument to their glory. Agnes — especially displeased with these interlopers — gets another unwelcome surprise: Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson, youngest daughter of Meryl Streep), the penniless daughter of her feckless brother, now deceased, is moving in with them, along with a friend, Peggy Scott (Denée Benton). She's a young Black woman and aspiring writer who helped pay Marian's way to New York from Pennsylvania.

Much of this nine-parter — written and created by "Downton Abbey's" Julian Fellowes — was shot at a set at Old Bethpage Village Restoration and a soundstage at the Gold Coast Studios in Bethpage.

MY SAY "The Gilded Age" is a whole new world for Fellowes and in obvious ways, the same-old same-old too. That clash of past and future, change and stasis, tradition and modernity also played out over six seasons on "Downton," which wrapped in 2016. Here the pace is quickened, albeit by degrees. A building boom has swallowed upper Manhattan and the robber barons have breached the city gates. The new money (Bertha) is ruthless while the old money (Agnes) resolute. "Downton" fans will recall a sideshow variation of this — Maggie Smith's Lady Violet vs. Shirley MacLaine's Martha Levinson — but in "The Gilded Age" this rivalry is the show.

Also like "Downton" (and Fellowes' "Gosford Park" long before), there's an "upstairs" setting (for the blue bloods) and a "downstairs" one (for the servants), where the lines of class and position are strictly observed, but the winds of envy, malice and spite blow with equal force. Meanwhile, up or down, the plot is driven by the slow accretion of details that pile up, grain by grain, until the force of gravity topples them over by the final act.

What? And you were expecting a "Gangs of New York" remake here maybe?

In fact, it's helpful to remember what makes a Fellowes production so appealing and which holds especially true here: The view. Legendary production designer Bob Shaw ("The Irishman," "The Sopranos") was handed a large check and spent every dime of it on some jaw-dropping sets. Every fashion detail — right down to the tucks, frills, and lace trimmings on the evening wear — is flawless, too, while everyone looks like they just stepped out of a John Singer Sargent portrait.

"The Gilded Age" is indeed gorgeous but that view also distracts from the flaws. Characters tend to be types rather than real people (a "Downton" defect, too.) Fellowes loves his characters far too much to mistreat them, so each is endowed with a fundamental decency, the resident robber baron included. A sentimental glow enfolds "The Gilded Age."

Moreover, that plotline about race (Benton's Peggy Scott) feels obligatory over the early episodes instead of organic. Reconstruction was brutally put down just a few years before the events of "The Gilded Age" so it's safe to assume Peggy's story is more complex than anyone else's here. Even nine hours couldn't begin to explore by just how much.

But come for that view, and this cast, and Fellowes' peerless talent for world-building — or at least a to-the-manor-born world. Don't come for any fresh insights into the American character. This is mostly fantasy, not a history lesson.

BOTTOM LINE Beautiful production with a long windup.