A doctor with a fully qualified moustache races up a carriageway towards an immaculate stately home. “I fear we should have sent for you sooner!” says the lady who greets him on the doorstep as the screams of a woman in drug-free labour rattle the windows in their frames. Oh, ya think? is not Dr Moustache’s reply.
When this many cliches assemble so quickly, it can only mean one thing: Brownstone Abbey – AKA Julian Fellowes’ Revenge, AKA What Did We Do to Deserve This?, AKA The Gilded Age if you insist on its official title – is back for a fourth and, no one has said let alone promised, final season.
The labouring woman is Gladys (Taissa Farmiga), daughter of the nouveau riche Russells of Fifth Avenue and now married to Hector (Ben Lamb – I’m sorry, actors, it’s Guardian policy to identify you), 5th Duke of Englandshire and living in England Hall in England after some plot last season. “She’s bleeding!” cries an astute maid, staring at a blood-soaked bed. “What’s wrong?” cries someone crackingly stupid. “She’s haemorraghing!” says the doctor, which is medical moustache for “She’s bleeding!”, so really, we are no further along. That’s the Gilded Age dialogue promise.
Meanwhile, back in America, the costume budget is assembling in church for the wedding of Oscar (Blake Ritson – again, I’m sorry but I don’t make the rules), scion of the old-money Van Rhijn family, and Enid (Kelley Curran), wealthy widow of Mr Winterton and former lady’s maid to Bertha Russell (Carrie Coon). Enid has mastered the constipated diction of the US aristocracy enough to fool Oscar’s mother, Agnes, into thinking that she is a suitable wife for Oscar. (Agnes is played by Christine Baranski, whom one imagines praying nightly before a shrine to Maggie Smith, the patron saint of actors’ retirement funds, begging for a sign that she has done the right thing.)
“At last my son is married!” says Agnes, for viewers who have just watched the wedding but still need a bit of help. “And to a fine-looking woman with enough money for them to live well! And soon I shall entertain the president of the United States!” She’s not having a stroke – Grover Cleveland is indeed due to be hosted at Brownstone Abbey. All signs point to it being the equivalent of the opera house wars from season one, so do hold on to your hats.
Enid has not, however, fooled either herself or Oscar into thinking she is the right woman for him. He is a dedicated homosexual; theirs is a marriage of convenience and much the healthiest setup of the bunch.
Right, what else is happening? Cynthia Nixon’s Ada is wealthier than Agnes now, since her rich reverend died, but she remains in constant facial rictus, a smile-thing happening beneath a permanently wrinkled nose so she looks as though someone has stuffed a slowly rotting rat up her bustle. Her niece Marian (Louisa Jacobson, daughter of Meryl Streep and honestly, family Thanksgivings must be so awkward whenever this is airing) is still yearning after the Russells’ (heterosexual) scion Larry (Harry Richardson), and I’m afraid no good comes of them being forced to stay in a hotel overnight after a coach accident. (Thunder, lightning, shot of horse rearing, wheel breaking, Larry saying “The horse must have been spooked by the storm!”, fealty to the dialogue promise rewarded by later nakedness with Marian.)
Peggy (Denée Benton) is engaged to William (Jordan Donica) and happily so, apart from his interfering mother (Phylicia Rashad). If my bingo card of as-yet-unused-tropes does not deceive me, Peggy is soon to experience problems in terms of reconciling her professional success with her imminently increasing domestic duties. She and the Kirklands remain a conduit for Fellowes’ and his co-typer Sonja Warfield’s take on turn-of-the-century race relations, which is as subtle as their take on class distinctions, Anglo-US relations and human relations, on which we shall not dwell.
George Russell (Morgan Spector plus beard, such a beard!) is still in financial difficulties: “And if I deal with him, I have to pay most of the transportation costs of the oil?” “Without his business, your railroad cannot survive!” He is also busy trying to track down the person who shot him before the Newport ball at the end of the last series. Something to do with copper mines, I think. I cannot be expected to remember everything.
Bridget, the Irish maid (Taylor Richardson), still hasn’t mastered her accent (“Halp me get the kek!”) and is still pining for Jack, the young inventor (Ben Ahlers). He is following up on his alarm-clock success with an electric mixer he assures potential investors will take the world by storm. Meanwhile, Gladys loses her uterus (“What’s wrong?” “The script using the word ‘uterus’”) and – do you know what? I’m too exhausted to go on. In short, all is as it was. Uniformly terrible and likely to outlive us all.
This stuff won an Emmy. America is a failed state. E pluribus zilch.
