TV Talk: HBO’s ‘Gilded Age’ grows more dramatic in 3rd season

Trib Total Media TV writer Rob Owen offers a viewing tip for the coming week.

HBO’s “The Gilded Age” returns for its third season (9 p.m. June 22, HBO, Max) and the show remains the best (and only!) “Upstairs Downstairs”/“Downton Abbey”-esque series in production today.

Sometimes it feels like not a lot happens in this 1890-set period drama, but thanks to a game cast of mostly Broadway veterans, “Gilded Age” remains an entertaining enough soap.

Last season’s emphasis on who will rule the new opera house (old money families or new money families?) gets replaced with whether new money matriarch Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon, “The White Lotus”) will get her way — and she usually gets her way. Will Bertha consign daughter Gladys (Taissa Farmiga) to a loveless marriage to the Duke of Buckingham (Ben Lamb) against the wishes of Gladys and Bertha’s railroad magnate husband, George Russell (Morgan Spector)?

Across the street from the Russells, old money Agnes Van Rhijn (Christine Baranski) is in a tizzy now that her widowed sister, Ada (Cynthia Nixon), controls the household’s purse strings. Ada sets her philanthropic sights on boosting the temperance movement, much to the dismay of Agnes, who enjoys wine with dinner.

“Let the sober circus begin,” Agnes quips before Ada’s teetotaler friends arrive.

Peggy Scott (2014 Carnegie Mellon University grad Denée Benton) continues her writing career, but an illness has her laid up in bed as the season begins. Something good comes out of it when she meets a handsome doctor (Jordan Donica). Happily, this third season also brings more screen time for Peggy’s mother, played by Audra McDonald. And Phylicia Rashad (“The Cosby Show”) joins the cast as the doctor’s imperious, snobby mother.

As much as Baranski brings the comedy with Agnes’ quips – she’s the Dowager Countess (Maggie Smith) of “Gilded Age” — “White Lotus” star Carrie Coon remains the show’s MVP. Her Bertha has many layers, seemingly villainous in the treatment of her daughter but surprisingly sympathetic and forward-thinking in her kind attitude toward a fellow socialite going through a scandalous-for-the-period divorce.

Season three of “The Gilded Age” starts a little slow but grows more dramatic in the latter half of the season with several gasp-worthy episode-ending cliffhangers. Other plots that seem important early in the season fall off along the way.

Most intriguing, by the end of the season, “Gilded Age” seems like it’s wrapping up some storylines, particularly romantic couplings, that built through three seasons. It feels like the show is getting ready to conclude as it brings back multiple characters from the show’s past. But then the final scene in the eighth episode undoes that neat bow, almost as if an HBO exec said, “Hey, not so fast, we may want to order a fourth season, give us a cliffhanger!”

In a virtual press conference earlier this month, series writers Julian Fellowes (“Downton Abbey”) and Sonja Warfield (“Will & Grace,” “Zoe Ever After”) said their approach to storytelling is to know the destination and reverse engineer the season from its conclusion.

“We know where we want to get to. The issue now becomes how we get there,” Fellowes said, noting their desire to incorporate some true historical events into each season’s plot.

Regarding Agnes’ umbrage over sister Ada’s newfound wealth, which followed Agnes losing her fortune at the end of season two, Fellowes said he’s fascinated by people who pretend the loss of money and position doesn’t affect them, that they can just go on as they did before.

“Of course they can’t,” Fellowes said. “Today we know that.”

The writer also wanted to see how the change in the power dynamic impacts both Agnes and Ada.

“Ada is a complacent person and wants things to be easy and go along … and she is content for Agnes to pretend not too much has changed,” Fellowes said. “But gradually during the season, we see Ada (find) the confidence that belongs to her, that is her right. I just wanted to explore that shift.”

Baranski described playing Agnes’ indignance as “yummy.”

“It’s not good news for Agnes, but it’s great news for Christine and for Christine and Cynthia,” Baranski said. “When the royalty falls off the throne, it makes for a good story and for delicious comic moments. We’ve had a lot of fun with it.”

Warfield said this season’s theme mirrors the first episode’s title, “Who Is in Charge Here?”

“Who is in charge in society? Who’s in charge in marriages? Who has the power?” Warfield said. “The power shift is relevant to all the stories and all the characters.”

CMU grad Benton said she was glad Fellowes “planted the seed” of the Black elite world in past seasons of the series. The Black elite of Newport get explored more fully in season three.

“(That story) getting to bloom into this garden with us watering it is just astounding to me,” Benton said. “People are learning history. I’m learning history and I feel like I’m getting to embody something really important. … It’s just so easy to keep dreaming up different worlds, so if they want to be stuck with me, I want to be stuck with Peggy for as long as possible.”