A classy piece of advice

JULIAN Fellowes’s new drama The Gilded Age is met with rapturous reviews here, while the New York Times derides it as a ‘Dimestore Downton’, a ‘muddled and slapdash portrait’ of the class divide between old and new money in 1882 New York, ‘that consistently dips into caricature’.

Sadly, I agree — despite Louisa Jacobson’s performance as Marian Brook (right) outshining the script. But at least Baron Fellowes of West Stafford can always heed the advice of his magnificent Downton Abbey’s Dowager Countess of Grantham: ‘Don’t be defeatist dear, it’s so middle class.’