spinofflive
From left to right: Carrie Coon as Brenda Russell, Christine Baranski as Agnes van Rhijin, Dame Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess Violet Crawley (obvs), Cynthia Nixon as Ada Brook and Denee Benton as Peggy Scott. (Image Design: Tina Tiller and Archi Banal)
From left to right: Carrie Coon as Brenda Russell, Christine Baranski as Agnes van Rhijin, Dame Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess Violet Crawley (obvs), Cynthia Nixon as Ada Brook and Denee Benton as Peggy Scott. (Image Design: Tina Tiller and Archi Banal)

Pop CultureJanuary 24, 2022

The Gilded Age is Downton Abbey with more Dowager Countesses

From left to right: Carrie Coon as Brenda Russell, Christine Baranski as Agnes van Rhijin, Dame Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess Violet Crawley (obvs), Cynthia Nixon as Ada Brook and Denee Benton as Peggy Scott. (Image Design: Tina Tiller and Archi Banal)
From left to right: Carrie Coon as Brenda Russell, Christine Baranski as Agnes van Rhijin, Dame Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess Violet Crawley (obvs), Cynthia Nixon as Ada Brook and Denee Benton as Peggy Scott. (Image Design: Tina Tiller and Archi Banal)

What if you took the best part of Downton Abbey and multiplied her? You get the best bits of The Gilded Age: the women.

When you think of Downton Abbey, what do you think of? Do you think of Mary killing a man via sex? Do you think of them killing off their romantic lead in an unceremonious car crash? Do you think about Mrs Hughes wandering around, muttering about murder? No. You think of Dame Maggie Smith as the Dowager Countess, stealing away scenes, episodes and entire seasons with a single raised eyebrow.

The role won Smith a slew of Emmys for doing the sort of acting work she could perform comatose, but those Emmys weren’t ill-awarded: she gave life, vigour and vinegar to a show that could often feel like BBC-sanctioned anti-anxiety meds. Not that many viewers were complaining, if the six seasons and two movies are anything to go by.

The one, the only Violet Crawley (Dame Maggie Smith) in Downton Abbey

The Gilded Age, set in turn of the century America, is creator and writer Julian Fellowes’ follow-up to Downton Abbey, and sits largely in the same milieu. Like Downton, The Gilded Age is concerned with the haves and the have nots, with old money and new, and features lots of expensive looking sets and even more expensive looking gowns. It occasionally dips into high drama (Death! Loss of fortune!) but largely exists in the realm of low-stakes social drama (Ankles showing! Not being invited to a party!).

The most obvious change is that this show is set in New York, not Yorkshire, but Fellowes has also widened his lens beyond a single fabulously wealthy family and their servants. While The Gilded Age focuses on a range of families from varying backgrounds, the two that take centre stage are the Brooks (no relation, presumably) who represent old money, and the Russells, railway-owning tycoons who intend to muscle their way into New York society by hook or by crook.

Fellowes has also figured out that we don’t come to these shows to see men push papers and tighten ties. Nobody cares about Lord Grantham and his repressed emotions. We care about the Dowager Countess (Violet, if you’re nasty). As if in response to my specific, unvoiced, request, Fellowes has filled this show with variants on that one iconic character. It’s an embarrassment of riches.

Christine Baranski as Agnes van Rhijin and Cynthia Nixon as Ada Brook in The Gilded Age. (Photo: HBO)

The most obvious parallel to the Dowager Countess is Agnes van Rhijin, played by the reliably resplendent Christine Baranski, who can steal a scene with one hollow chuckle. She’s the closest thing the series has to a villain, but a more appropriate label might be anti-hero. We should hate her – she’s the representation of everything wrong with society, all about restrictions and the way that things should be done – but we can’t. Baranski adds a melancholy undercurrent to each withering glance and vicious bon mot, a constant reminder that her rigid social mores will break before they bend.

Less obvious but no less crucial is Ada Brook, Agnes’ sister and ward, played by Cynthia Nixon at her least Miranda Hobbes. Ada is a mirror image of Agnes: while she seems soft on the surface –  as exemplified in one memorable sequence where she loses her dog Pumpkin –  she’s always watching and always absorbing. Even though her niece describes her as “kind but not clever”, you get the sense that Ada won’t be brought down when rust comes for the gilded lot.

On the other hand, Carrie Coon’s Brenda Russell, very loosely based on real-life 18th century socialite Alva Vanderbilt, is essentially what you would get if the Dowager Countess dropped the “o”. By which I mean, she’s delightful to watch. It helps that Coon is doing an extremely specific accent that belongs to no region but instead drowns every sentence with disdain and dollar bills. Brenda is also the source of much of the series’ drama: she is excluded at every turn from higher society, purely because she came into her money rather than being born into it. Watching her plot and scheme out in the open, disrespecting people to their face, is glorious. She wears her wealth as proudly and unashamedly as she wears her gowns, adorned with flounces, ruffles and a runway’s worth of taffeta.

Carrie Coon as Brenda Russell in The Gilded Age. (Photo: HBO)

There are other women in the series, including Marian Brook (played by Louisa Jacobson, the third Streep daughter to go into acting) who is born into money, but still new to this particular society. Marian is the least interesting, by which I mean she has a moral compass and doesn’t get very many funny lines. Perhaps the most engaging of the non-Dowager-adjacent characters is Peggy Scott (Denee Benton), a Black woman from Pennsylvania with aspirations to make it as a writer in New York. Her presence provides a compelling tension in the series, forcing the characters to address race in a way that they, uh, didn’t really have the opportunity to in Downton Abbey, to put it nicely.

All in all, the formula for  The Gilded Age’s success is simple. Take the best bits of your best character, multiply them into more characters, and place those characters in opposition to each other. Hire some of the best actors of the day to play them – seriously, Carrie Coon is doing the Lord’s work here – and boom! You’ve got yourself an entertaining TV show. Grantham who?

The Gilded Age starts streaming on Neon tomorrow; episodes drop weekly on Tuesdays.

Keep going!
Holiday Records
Joel Woods and Ben Wallace, the founders of Holiday Records, are sticklers for quality control. Image: Supplied/Archi Banal

BusinessJanuary 23, 2022

Two friends, one dream, no holiday: inside NZ’s only vinyl pressing plant

Holiday Records
Joel Woods and Ben Wallace, the founders of Holiday Records, are sticklers for quality control. Image: Supplied/Archi Banal

It’s called Holiday Records, but for those working on the frontlines of the turntable resurgence, there’s barely been time for one.

Behind a glass door on Auckland’s Wellesley Street, secrets are being kept. Like Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory, a boiler gurgles mysteriously, steam hisses sporadically, and large machinery whizzes, whirs, pumps and pounds. At Holiday Records, they’re making magic: vinyl records, those sleek back discs that are suddenly in shockingly high demand. 

“We live it and breathe it,” says one staff member at New Zealand’s only vinyl pressing plant. He’s standing in front of a pile of freshly pressed records, holding each up to the light, checking it over for imperfections. Once it’s approved, it will be slipped into a protective sleeve, then a cover, shrinkwrapped and boxed, waiting to be purchased and played on a turntable at home. 

The problem? On a recent Wednesday morning, the album in question was from a major artist signed to the famed Seattle label Subpop, one so hot off the press it’s not due for release for another three months. A perk of a job like this is getting to hear highly anticipated albums earlier than others. After all, it counts as quality control.

Could The Spinoff perhaps have an early listen? Joel Woods, who runs New Zealand’s only vinyl pressing plant with his friend Ben Wallace, shakes his head.

“This,” he says, mega ironically, “is off the record.”

Holiday Records
Joel Woods matches over Holiday Records’ vinyl press, imported from Canada. Image: Supplied

Woods and Wallace can be found at their noisy inner city pressing plant most days, working at the coal face of the vinyl resurgence. Thanks to an idea they had three years ago coming to fruition in a big way, business is booming, expansion plans are in full swing, and they, along with their two other full-time staff members, are no longer able to live up to their name. “We should have called it Anti-Holiday records,” jokes Wallace.

Thanks to a six-month backlog of orders, the fact they’re New Zealand’s only pressing plant, and one of just three across Australasia, Holiday Records is at capacity. To pump out up to 1300 records a day, staff can be found there six days a week from 6.30am until close to midnight. It’s like running a cafe, “and a restaurant,” jokes Wallace. A wait list six months long means they’ll soon move to seven days a week to keep up with demand. 

They’re not done yet. By the end of the year, things are about to get even more crammed on their central city site. A second custom-built press will arrive from Toronto, meaning that, with twice the staff, they’ll be able to double their output. By then, their small site will be at capacity. “We’re going to take over the whole carpark,” says Woods. “Or we’re eyeing up a new location.” 

All this work means Woods and Wallace have been forced to keep a few secrets lately. Demand from record labels for their services means they’re entrusted with new albums from major artists. At the moment, they’re working through back catalogues for Lorde, Johnny Cash, Crowded House and Tame Impala — albums that have been out of print and hard to get for months.

Holiday Records
Records are made by pressing melted PVC pellets into record plates. Image: Supplied

Being able to press records from their favourite artists or listen to albums ahead of a release date is a major perk of their job. Being able to go on holiday is not: Woods and Wallace were only recently able to take their first break since they opened, closing for two weeks over Christmas. They don’t know when their next one might be.

It hasn’t always been this way. Holiday Records began when Wallace’s old Hawke’s Bay folk band tried, and failed, to get an album pressed on vinyl. No one in New Zealand could do it. “It was like, ‘Why isn’t there one here?’,” says Wallace. With Woods, the pair investigated what it would take to open a pressing plant, talking to other owners around the world and flying to Toronto, Canada, for training.

They realised it could be done, but it was a huge gamble. They had no experience, and didn’t know anyone else here who did. But they’d seen vinyl’s comeback first-hand. “We started to hear anecdotes of people going to dinner parties and taking records instead of wine,” says Wallace, “or of vinyl being given as gifts at weddings”.

Vinyl seemed to be on the rise. Their fortunes did not, and the bank didn’t see their business dreams in quite the same light. “We thought it was a bonus that there were no competitors,” says Wallace. Yet the lack of similar business models made banks sceptical. “They were like, ‘Why are you the only one?’ … but we got it in the end.”

Holiday Records
The finished record is allowed to cool overnight, then checked for imperfections before being sleeved. Image: Supplied

That first year was rough. Records labels didn’t yet trust them, and they had to hustle for orders. Equipment sometimes broke down, a tiny hydraulic spring putting them out of action for weeks. When you’ve only got one press, time equals money. “There were some really tough moments,” admits Wallace. Yet they had no back-up plan. “Because of the gravity of it, you’ve got to make it plan A, B and C, and make it work.”

They – ahem – pressed on, focusing on making quality control as high as it could be. They also emphasised making things as environmentally friendly as possible, with PVC offcuts recycled as piping, and cooling water being re-used. And they learnt how to fix breakdowns themselves, stocking up on spare parts. News spread, orders got bigger. A request for 2000 Six60 records pushed Woods and Wallace to their limit. “It took us over two weeks,”says Wallace. “We had to press and  sleeve and shrinkwrap everything ourselves.”

Now, they’ve sped up, and everything is trending up. Since April last year, vinyl’s rise has been “exponential,” says Wallace. Up to 15 requests a day land in their inbox from acts or labels looking to get their vinyl moved up the supply chain. Overseas, wait times can be a year or more. Holiday Records is slightly more flexible: last year, when Ladyhawke’s vinyl pressing plans for her new album fell through, Holiday Records answered an SOS call and managed to slip her album in, completing a complicated marbled vinyl request.

Is it a fad? Will vinyl fade away like CDs and DVDs? They don’t think so. “Vinyl has just overtaken CDs (in sales),” says Woods. “It’s booming everywhere.” Wallace, who has kept rubber gloves on his hands throughout our interview, needs to get back to work. “It’s been astronomical,” he says. “We’re pressing far more than we ever thought we would be.”

Read more: ‘People froth it’: Inside the craze for Aotearoa’s most sought-after record

But wait there's more!