The Gilded Age to become America’s Downton Abbey:

The American television network NBC has engaged the creator of the popular British series, Downton Abbey, to make an American version.

NBC hopes to replicate the success of Downton Abbey, which is part soap opera/part period drama with a social conscience, with a series entitled The Gilded Age set in New York in the late 1800s when families such as the Rockfellers, Astors, Carnegies, Vanderbilts and Morgans built their fortunes. Just like their counterparts across the Atlantic, the scions of American establishment lived in a period of significant social and technological change at a time when New York was becoming – if not already – the most powerful city in the world.

Julian Fellowes has a long and accomplished history both in television and film. He has acted onscreen since the 1970s and began writing screenplays in the early 1990s. Before Downton Abbey, Fellowes penned the scripts to noted movies such as Gosford Park and Vanity Fair.

Television critics have hailed Julian Fellowes for his ability to interweave complicated social dynamics, history and class conscious dialogue into a bite size television package. NBC executives believe the same touch to a series about America’s rich and powerful will be different and help tell an important part of the American story. If Fellowes sticks to his guns, he will end up dividing time – like Downton and previous productions – between those in power upstairs and the servants that prop them up.

In real life, Julian Fellowes is a lifetime Conservative peer born in Cairo when his father was on a diplomatic posting to Egypt. He is married with one adult son.