A doctor with a fully qualified moustache races up a carriageway towards an immaculate stately home. \u201cI fear we should have sent for you sooner!\u201d says the lady who greets him on the doorstep as the screams of a woman in drug-free labour rattle the windows in their frames. Oh, ya think? is not Dr Moustache\u2019s reply.<\/p>\n
When this many cliches assemble so quickly, it can only mean one thing: Brownstone Abbey \u2013 AKA Julian Fellowes\u2019 Revenge, AKA What Did We Do to Deserve This?, AKA The Gilded Age if you insist on its official title \u2013 is back for a fourth and, no one has said let alone promised, final season.<\/p>\n
The labouring woman is Gladys (Taissa Farmiga), daughter of the nouveau riche Russells of Fifth Avenue and now married to Hector (Ben Lamb \u2013 I\u2019m sorry, actors, it\u2019s Guardian policy to identify you), 5th Duke of Englandshire and living in England Hall in England after some plot last season. \u201cShe\u2019s bleeding!\u201d cries an astute maid, staring at a blood-soaked bed. \u201cWhat\u2019s wrong?\u201d cries someone crackingly stupid. \u201cShe\u2019s haemorraghing!\u201d says the doctor, which is medical moustache for \u201cShe\u2019s bleeding!\u201d, so really, we are no further along. That\u2019s the Gilded Age dialogue promise.<\/p>\n
Meanwhile, back in America, the costume budget is assembling in church for the wedding of Oscar (Blake Ritson \u2013 again, I\u2019m sorry but I don\u2019t make the rules), scion of the old-money Van Rhijn family, and Enid (Kelley Curran), wealthy widow of Mr Winterton and former lady\u2019s maid to Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon). Enid has mastered the constipated diction of the US aristocracy enough to fool Oscar\u2019s mother, Agnes, into thinking that she is a suitable wife for Oscar. (Agnes is played by Christine Baranski, whom one imagines praying nightly before a shrine to Maggie Smith, the patron saint of actors\u2019 retirement funds, begging for a sign that she has done the right thing.)<\/p>\n
\u201cAt last my son is married!\u201d says Agnes, for viewers who have just watched the wedding but still need a bit of help. \u201cAnd to a fine-looking woman with enough money for them to live well! And soon I shall entertain the president of the United States!\u201d She\u2019s not having a stroke \u2013 Grover Cleveland is indeed due to be hosted at Brownstone Abbey. All signs point to it being the equivalent of the opera house wars from season one, so do hold on to your hats.<\/p>\n
Enid has not, however, fooled either herself or Oscar into thinking she is the right woman for him. He is a dedicated homosexual; theirs is a marriage of convenience and much the healthiest setup of the bunch.<\/p>\n
Jack Gilpin (Mr Church), Carrie Coon (Bertha Russell), Taissa Farmiga (Gladys de Vere) and (Ashley Atkinson) as Mamie Fish. Photograph: HBO<\/p>\n
Right, what else is happening? Cynthia Nixon\u2019s Ada is wealthier than Agnes now, since her rich reverend died, but she remains in constant facial rictus, a smile-thing happening beneath a permanently wrinkled nose so she looks as though someone has stuffed a slowly rotting rat up her bustle. Her niece Marian (Louisa Jacobson, daughter of Meryl Streep and honestly, family Thanksgivings must be so awkward whenever this is airing) is still yearning after the Russells\u2019 (heterosexual) scion Larry (Harry Richardson), and I\u2019m afraid no good comes of them being forced to stay in a hotel overnight after a coach accident. (Thunder, lightning, shot of horse rearing, wheel breaking, Larry saying \u201cThe horse must have been spooked by the storm!\u201d, fealty to the dialogue promise rewarded by later nakedness with Marian.)<\/p>\n
Peggy (Den\u00e9e Benton) is engaged to William (Jordan Donica) and happily so, apart from his interfering mother (Phylicia Rashad). If my bingo card of as-yet-unused-tropes does not deceive me, Peggy is soon to experience problems in terms of reconciling her professional success with her imminently increasing domestic duties. She and the Kirklands remain a conduit for Fellowes\u2019 and his co-typer Sonja Warfield\u2019s take on turn-of-the-century race relations, which is as subtle as their take on class distinctions, Anglo-US relations and human relations, on which we shall not dwell.<\/p>\n
George Russell (Morgan Spector plus beard, such a beard!) is still in financial difficulties: \u201cAnd if I deal with him, I have to pay most of the transportation costs of the oil?\u201d \u201cWithout his business, your railroad cannot survive!\u201d He is also busy trying to track down the person who shot him before the Newport ball at the end of the last series<\/a>. Something to do with copper mines, I think. I cannot be expected to remember everything.<\/p>\n Bridget, the Irish maid (Taylor Richardson), still hasn\u2019t mastered her accent (\u201cHalp me get the kek!\u201d) and is still pining for Jack, the young inventor (Ben Ahlers). He is following up on his alarm-clock success with an electric mixer he assures potential investors will take the world by storm. Meanwhile, Gladys loses her uterus (\u201cWhat\u2019s wrong?\u201d \u201cThe script using the word \u2018uterus\u2019\u201d) and \u2013 do you know what? I\u2019m too exhausted to go on. In short, all is as it was. Uniformly terrible and likely to outlive us all.<\/p>\n This stuff won an Emmy. America is a failed state. E pluribus zilch.<\/p>\n The Gilded Age aired on Sky Atlantic and is on Now in the UK, and on HBO in the US and Paramount+ in Australia.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A doctor with a fully qualified moustache races up a carriageway towards an immaculate stately home. \u201cI fear…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":649294,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[156,111,139,69,437],"class_list":["post-649293","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-tv"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649293","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=649293"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/649293\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/649294"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=649293"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=649293"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=649293"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}