I had a couple of reasons for bothering to watch the first episode in the new HBO series The Gilded Age. These reasons prevailed, even though I never managed to get through even one full episode of the previous series created and written by Julian Fellowes, called — you may have heard of it? — Downton Abbey.

First reason: Fellowes has been giving a lot of interviews talking about how pertinent The Gilded Age is in our current time of monstrous economic inequality. As Fellowes notes, we have a “kind of dynamic with all of our billionaires racing each other to the moon that is rather reminiscent of the Gilded Age.” It seemed that the subject matter of the series would almost necessitate a critical look at this period of the 1870s to early 1900s, when a class of newly rich Americans outdid all previous Anglo-American practices of cutthroat capitalism and conspicuous consumption, in a way that set an obscene standard for jet sets and tech moguls and assorted Trumps to come.

Second reason: a long time ago, Julian Fellowes wrote a good script for the film Gosford Park (2001), directed by Robert Altman. It followed the formula established in the 1970s BBC drama Upstairs, Downstairs that became such a hit, its basic structure featuring the intertwined lives of upper-crust households and the servants who run them. Fellowes and Alton turned Gosford Park into a combination Agatha Christie–style whodunit and class-conscious critique of the domestic horror show of the British aristocracy.