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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
53
Mixed:
22
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews
Jun 20, 2025
Season 3 Review:
Three seasons in, The Gilded Age has barely explored its huge cast of servant characters. Like Downton, it has more sympathy for—and curiosity about—aristocrats desperate to keep fortunes they didn’t earn than it does for workers whose pursuit of happiness is enshrined in America’s founding documents.
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TV Guide MagazineNov 2, 2023
Season 2 Review:
The stakes couldn't be lower or sillier in Season 2, but the production values couldn't be higher. Ignore the simpering self-righteousness of the show's younger characters to luxuriate in the costumes, staggering interiors and barbed banter of the upper classes. [6 - 26 Nov 2023, p.9]
The GuardianOct 30, 2023
Season 2 Review:
The chemistry between Bertha and George is off the Edith Wharton scale. Still, they remain one-dimensional: made purely of ambition, like the American myth itself. Also the dialogue, in general, is like second-rate champagne. It never fizzes as it should. It takes some effort to give Oscar Wilde a cameo and grant him not one quotable line. And yet. Fellowes’ conservatism is served with just enough perspective to prevent it tipping over into a complete endorsement of the establishment.
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Jan 21, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Because he works with types—types he himself has established in his various programs—Mr. Fellowes can move the narrative along its track without sacrificing dialogue to the inconvenience of character development. We know who these people are. They're clichés—not unpleasant but wholly unsurprising. ... The real drama resides in the Russells, who are the least believable characters in the series. (Only five episodes were made available for review, which doesn't bode well, but maybe it gets better?)
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Jan 20, 2022
Season 1 Review:
For the most part, it entertains without illuminating. Fellowes recycles too many of his favorite archetypes, from the closeted gay couple to the scheming servant. And while he includes two households’ worth of “below stairs” characters, their story lines go largely undeveloped in the five episodes sent for review.
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Jan 20, 2022
Season 1 Review:
None of the stories are dull, but they’re somewhere between bland and familiar. The same is true of the look of The Gilded Age. ... At its best, Downton Abbey was a brainy, polished soap opera of the highest order and, thus far, The Gilded Age could use more of that soapiness.
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The PlaylistJan 20, 2022
Jun 20, 2025
Season 3 Review:
There’s a flimsy gold-plating applied to the eight episodes of the new season. How bad? Susan Sontag once defined “camp” as “failed seriousness.” The third season of “The Gilded Age” is failed camp. .... Aside from [Ms. Baranski and] Mr. Lane in his infrequent appearances, seems to know he or she is in a comedy (or should be). That said, Mr. Ritson gives a startlingly soulful performance as Oscar.
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Jan 27, 2022
Season 1 Review:
The whole thing feels much too rote and timid for HBO—even if the costumes deliberately evoke modern sensibilities and wouldn’t be out of place on the ladies of And Just Like That, who are trying as resolutely to assert their relevance in a changing world as Agnes is. The mood is too saturnine, the occasional nods to social criticism too stilted.
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Jan 24, 2022
Season 1 Review:
Beyond a normal, warmblooded amount of interest in a developing love triangle between Marian, a handsome young solicitor (Thomas Cocquerel), and the maybe-slightly-more-handsome young scion of the Russell family (Harry Richardson), I truly can’t bring myself to care about these people and their airless drawing room lives.
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Jan 24, 2022
Season 1 Review:
The series’s headlining star is Carrie Coon, who’s trapped in an iciness from which Fellowes barely lets her stir. (She’s hardly alone; the sprawling cast is chockablock with beloved actors, nearly all saddled with frustratingly underwritten characters.) ... Apart from Peggy, whose journeys between the Black and White New Yorks provide some novelty, there is hardly anyone to root for or invest in.
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