The first season’s engine is the clash between these two worlds.

Directly across the street, however, a wrecking ball has been swung at that very principle.

The Gilded Age Season One is a story of : who has it, how they flaunt it, and what they will sacrifice to keep it. It reminds us that while the clothes and carriages are beautiful, the foundations are built on railroad strikes, social cruelty, and the desperate yearning to be seen. And in that, it feels not so distant from our own age.

The series, created by Julian Fellowes (of Downton Abbey fame), opens a vivid window onto a specific ten-year boom period (1870-1900) coined by Mark Twain: an era of staggering industrial growth, grotesque wealth inequality, and thin "golden" gilding covering a framework of ruthless ambition and social struggle.

Marian, after a disastrous near-elopement with a dishonest suitor (the handsome but broke Tom Raikes), returns to her aunts’ house, sadder but wiser. And Peggy, having reconciled with her estranged parents, decides to stay in Manhattan to pursue her dream of writing.