Many don’t realize that The Gilded Age, the very grand and expensive HBO/Max/HBOMaxAgain show, was actually devised for a very specific audience: quirky early millennial women who studied theater in college and briefly tried their hand at acting before ultimately becoming writers.
That the show seems to have mass appeal is surprising because it was definitely created for that very niche subset of people.
How did HBO/Max/WhatAreWeDoing achieve this? They set the show in 1882. Because they know quirky Xennial women can’t resist a lush period drama. Most of them own at least one corset, though they’re not sure why.
And, of course, quirky Xennial women are here for the historical references. That young artist you just saw onscreen? That was John Singer Sargent. And they knew it. They reached over to poke their husbands, “Do you know who that is? Stanford White! The Jeffrey Epstein of his time!”