HBO's 'Downton Abbey' Replacement Is Officially a No. 1 Global Sensation

Published Nov 9, 2026, 2:30 PM EST

Makuochi Echebiri is a News Writer for Collider.  He has been interested in creative writing from as far back as high school, and he would consume pretty much anything that’s film or TV. However, his truest love lies in the presence of historical epics and thrillers.

Lured by the brilliance of Middle Earth from an early age both in print and on screen, his palate has since expanded to other realms including Westeros, Kattegat among others. He also possesses a great appetite for the stories that emanate from the vastness of space. Even though he is no Avenger.

Obsessed with storytelling and having works of his own that have yet to make it to print, he is content to use that ability to communicate to as many as are reachable. In his spare time, he looks out for avenues where he can aid people aside from his plans to reign over this earthly realm. Yes…you heard that first here.

Sign in to your Collider account

Exotic costumes, power plays, inter- and intra-family feuds are some of the hallmarks that make period dramas stand out. Networks and streaming services consistently come up with compelling storylines which elevate the bar. From Bridgerton to The Crown to Outlander, all helped stage a resurgence while pulling its audiences ever deeper into the crevices of its expertly crafted plots. While HBO might be king of prestige television with its acclaimed Westerosi-themed universe, the network has an A-list standard-bearer for period dramas.

In September 2010, Downton Abbey premiered and perfected the art of period dramas to suit its modern audience. Upon its conclusion in 2015, the series was arguably left without a strong successor till Netflix's flagship series, Bridgerton, came on half a decade later to enormous success. But HBO had an answer to the Shondaland series, one with a premise that is still quite familiar in the modern world: classism. HBO's The Gilded Age, created by Julian Fellowes, who also created and co-wrote Downton Abbey, premiered in 2022 and in its three seasons — with a fourth season just premiering — tells the story of wealthy, established families in New York in the 19th century, seeking to bar the entrance into upper society of newly wealthy families.

Season 3 of The Gilded Age concluded almost in a state of flux, as it left the fate of major characters, emotionally and otherwise, in the balance. Season 4 premiered on November 1, and the period drama's return has once reiterated its claim as the successor show to Fellowes' Downton Abbey. Per FlixPatrol, upon its return, The Gilded Age has become a global streaming sensation, climbing to the top of the charts in over 40 countries, including the United Kingdom and the U.S. This early success is record-breaking, as it has become the most-watched season premiere yet, averaging nearly 4 million viewers across platforms, according HBO.

Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Iconic Romance Is Your Favorite? Harry & Sally · Love & Basketball · Heated Rivalry · Titanic

Four great love stories, and four completely different ideas of what love actually is. One is a friendship that took twelve years to admit itself. One is two people who refuse to stop competing. One happens entirely behind closed doors. And one lasts five days and never stops mattering. Eight questions decide which one is really yours.

🍂Harry & Sally(1989)

🏀Love & Basketball(2000)

🏒Heated Rivalry(HBO Max)

🚢Titanic(1997)

FIND YOUR ROMANCE →

01

How does your love story start? The first scene tells you what kind of story this is going to be.

AWe are friends for years before either of us says anything. BWe want the same thing and neither of us backs down. CNobody can know, including our closest friends. DOne look across a room and everything changes.

NEXT QUESTION →

02

What do the two of you keep arguing about? Every great romance has one fight it has over and over.

AWhether this is actually happening, and what to call it. BWhose career comes first this year. CWhether we will ever be honest about this in public. DNothing small. When we fight, it is about everything.

NEXT QUESTION →

03

How do you show somebody that you love them? Grand gestures are easy to write. This is the harder question.

AI remember every single thing they have told me. BI show up to the things that matter to them. CI keep their secrets like they are my own. DI would give up something enormous for them.

NEXT QUESTION →

04

What is actually standing in the way? There is always something. Which something tells you the genre.

ATiming. We keep finding each other at the wrong moment. BAmbition. We both want big lives and they do not match. CThe world. It is not safe to be open about this yet. DEverybody around us has decided this cannot happen.

NEXT QUESTION →

05

Which romantic moment gets you every single time? Be honest. There is one that works on you and you know which.

ASomebody running across a city to say it before midnight. BSomebody in the stands who stayed until the very end. CA look across a crowded room that nobody else catches. DSomebody promising to hold on, and meaning it.

NEXT QUESTION →

06

What would you actually risk for the right person? Every romance asks this. Most people find out far too late.

AA friendship I could never get back. BThe plan I have had for my life since I was a kid. CMy privacy. All of it would become public. DEverything. I would not think about it for long.

NEXT QUESTION →

07

Where are the two of you in ten years? Some love stories are about the meeting. Some are about the staying.

AStill talking. We have never run out of things to say. BBuilding something together, both of us still ambitious. CFinally open about it, after years of being careful. DApart, and I still think about it constantly.

NEXT QUESTION →

08

Which of these sounds most like something you would say? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your romance.

AI would rather talk to you than anybody else, forever. BI am not giving up either of us. We find a way to have both. CThis is mine, and I am not explaining it to anyone. DI would do the whole thing again, even knowing how it ends.

REVEAL MY ROMANCE →

Roll The Credits Your Romance Is…

Four love stories, four completely different ideas of what it means to be somebody's person. This is the one that matches how you actually fall, and what it would ask of you.

Harry & Sally

You do not fall for strangers. You fall for the person you have already been talking to for years, which is the slowest and by some distance the most durable way anybody has found to do this.

• When Harry Met Sally made the case that the best romance is an argument you enjoy, conducted over a decade, by two people refusing to admit what is happening.
• You want to be known rather than swept away. Somebody who remembers your worst story is doing better work than anybody arriving with flowers.
• The film is unusually honest about timing. These two are wrong for each other repeatedly until suddenly they are not, and neither of them engineered it.
• You would still be talking about everything at eighty. That is the entire promise.

Love & Basketball

You want a partner, not an audience. Somebody who wants their own life as badly as you want yours, and who would never ask you to be smaller to make the relationship easier.

• This is the rare romance where both people have a real career and the film takes both of them equally seriously.
• You would rather be pushed than protected. The right person for you is also a bit of a rival, and that never entirely goes away.
• It understands the actual problem in ambitious relationships. Not whether you love each other, but whose turn it is this year.
• You would still be competing at forty. That is how you would know it was working.

Heated Rivalry

The intensity was never the problem. The secrecy is. You are drawn to a love that lives entirely in private, and to the particular ache of wanting somebody you are not supposed to want.

• Heated Rivalry runs on the oldest engine in romance: two people on opposite sides, meeting in secret, getting far more attached than either of them planned.
• You keep your private life genuinely private, and something in you finds hidden things more real than public ones.
• The tension is not only between the two of them. It is between what they have and what it would cost either one to say it out loud.
• Years of this, and the whole story is really about whether either of them will finally stop hiding.

Titanic

You do not do this cautiously. When it happens for you it is immediate and total and it rearranges everything, and you would not accept a smaller version of it.

• Titanic gave us the biggest romance in film history and then made it last about five days, which is precisely the point of it.
• You measure love by intensity rather than duration. A few days of the real thing beats decades of something merely comfortable.
• The film is not only about the romance. It is about a woman who went on to live an enormous life afterwards because of it.
• You would still be telling this story at a hundred years old, and telling it exactly the same way.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

Who Stars in 'The Gilded Age'?

While Fellowes brings his Downton Abbey expertise to the party, the creator requires the right tools to execute. The cast of The Gilded Age suit those needs effectively, with Carrie Coon (The Leftovers) as Bertha Russell and Morgan Spector (The Plot Against America) as George Russell. The dedication to excellence, year-on-year, was reflected in consistent positive reviews even in the third season. Season 3 holds a near-perfect, series-high 96% rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes.

The rest of the cast includes Louisa Jacobson as Marian Brook, Denée Benton as Peggy Scott, Christine Baranski (The Good Fight) as Agnes van Rhijn, Cynthia Nixon (Sex and the City) as Ada Brook, Taissa Farmiga as Gladys Russell, Harry Richardson as Larry Russell, Blake Ritson as Oscar van Rhijn, Ben Ahlers as Jack Treacher, and Donna Murphy as Mrs. Astor.

The Gilded Age Season 4 is streaming on HBO Max with new episodes on Sundays.