Julian fellowes

I am on record as being somewhere between weary and terrified of the threatened arrival of Downton Abbey 2 in our movie theaters imminently. But this is also tinged with sadness. When Julian Fellowes emerged with his screenplay for Robert Altman’s Gosford Park in 2001, it fizzed with wit and imagination. Now, he has seemingly become the go-to chronicler of English upper-class life, churning out increasingly nonsensical variants on the same story with greatly diminishing returns. So how does he fare when he turns his attention to American upper-class life? The new HBO series The Gilded Age attempts to answer this question. It primarily concerns two New York figures in the 1880s, who are schematically represented as "snobbish Old Money" and "arriviste New Money.

I love a British costume drama. My idea of a perfect Sunday afternoon film is something picturesque, with Anthony Hopkins, Emma Thompson, Helena Bonham Carter and others looking alternately repressed and joyful, even as they exchange clenched platitudes about weather, money and train times. "The trains mean sex," someone who knows about these things told me once. "And so does money." "But what about the weather?" I asked. "Surely storms mean passion and sunshine means sex?" The expert looked at me as if I was mad. "The weather means the weather. Don’t forget, these things are filmed in Britain.