“The vast majority of people just don’t have anything in common with someone like George Russell,” he says. “When I first read these scripts, it was in 2020. Bernie Sanders was still a frontrunner in the presidential campaign, and class politics were in the news. There was a sense that maybe we are tired of billionaires and their power.”
He’s not wrong for wondering just how elastic viewer tolerance would be for 19th century cultural warfare between old and new money. But Spector credits creator Julian Fellowes with recognizing the timeless appetite for sudsy yet sharp historical fiction that places privileged characters and their often-trivial problems in the context of a transformational moment in history. During the show’s second season,…
