“The Gilded Age,” the much-anticipated follow-up from the creator of the British period drama “Downton Abbey,” is to air in 2019 on NBC, the network confirmed on Wednesday. The 10-part series is written by the British screenwriter and director Julian Fellowes, who will also be its executive producer.
The series is set in 1880s New York and will follow the character of Marion Brook during a time of rapid social change, exploring the tension between new money and established wealth.
“To write ‘The Gilded Age’ is the fulfillment of a personal dream,” Mr. Fellowes said in a statement. “America is a wonderful country with a rich and varied history, and nothing could give me more pleasure than be the person to bring that compelling history to the screen.”
Plans for “The Gilded Age” were first announced by NBC in 2012, while “Downton Abbey” was still in production. In an interview with The New York Times in 2015, Mr. Fellowes said of creating the new show, “I am a big, big fan of Edith Wharton and Henry James and that period of history after the Civil War — the Vanderbilts and the Whitneys and all of those people.”
There have long been trans-Atlantic currents in Mr. Fellowes’ work. In “Downton Abbey,” the main character the Earl of Grantham is married to an American heiress. Mr. Fellowes wrote the screenplay for the American director Robert Altman’s “Gosford Park,” a murder mystery set in an English stately home in the 1930s that won the Academy Award for best original screenplay in 2002.
Mr. Fellowes’ historical melodrama “Downton Abbey,” which first aired on ITV in Britain in 2010 and on PBS in the United States in 2011, ran for six seasons. It was critically acclaimed on both sides of the Atlantic, winning 15 Emmys and 69 nominations.