Not to judge her too harshly, Bertha Russell as played to perfection by Carrie Coon, is a piece of work. Machinations galore do not make this doyenne of new money a bad person, just one you fear, and one you hope will succeed. That is the triumph of Season 3 of “The Gilded Age:” a guilty pleasure to be savored, week to week on HBO, or binge watched. This is after all a drama of early twentieth century America, with change and upward mobility built into the ethos.

Season 1 was a bonanza for theater actors newly available during the Covid theater shutdown. Audra McDonald, Donna Murphy, Nathan Lane, Michael Cerveris, Celia Keenan-Bolger—top, top TONY winners and Broadway draws in the mix for juicy roles in this series. Kelli O’Hara as Aurora Fane is particularly wonderful in Season 3, in a role marking transitional status for divorcees—one instance of society moving forward in this time. It was a new “dawn” indeed.

To say more would require spoiler alerts—and no one wants to miss the fun of who will be paired with whom in twisty plots that one-up the demure marriages in any Jane Austen novel. Agnes Van Rhijn and Ada Forte nee Brook, characters played by Christine Baranski and Cynthia Nixon vie for power upstairs, as Jack (Ben Ahlers) from downstairs cashes in on his clock invention, becoming master of his own house.

Life changes rapidly. Women ousted from society by the actions of men are redeemed. Strong-headed women like Marian Brook (Louisa Jacobson) and Peggy Scott (Denee Benton) have a predictably hard time. Marriage, a former bedrock can be rocky for women– a safe haven, until . . . . So turns fortune’s wheel. The season ends with a delicious cliff hanger that only Julian Fellowes could dare invent.