10 TV Shows To Watch After You've Devoured "Bridgerton"

If you like: the old vs. the new, beautiful gowns at lavish balls, the thrill of two hands brushing

Any fan of period stories can name at least three towns in the UK where the rich of the 18th or 19th century "summers." What we know less about, even as Americans, is what those same people were up to in New York City. Now we do! The Gilded Age, by Downton Abbey creator Julian Fellows, follows Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson, real-life daughter of Meryl Streep) as a young woman (although her age, like with many characters, is a bit of a question mark to me) who moves to NYC to live with her two aunts (Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon). It's 1882, 30th Street is no longer in fashion, now the rich must move uptown to 61st Street — and the fight between the new money, aka the Russell family, and the old money guard led by the Astors is heating up. However, Peggy (Denée Benton), a Black woman with writing aspirations who becomes intertwined with the Brooks family, intrigues me the most. The costumes are beautiful, the sets outlandish. I want more affairs and romances, but I'm confident they're coming. And for those Broadway inclined viewers, I counted eight Tony Winners in the pilot alone — Baranski and Nixon, Audra McDonald, Kelli O'Hara, Celia Keenan-Bolger, Donna Murphy, Katie Finneran, and Michael Cerveris. Benton is a Tony Nominee.