Monday TV: A Glittering ‘The Gilded Age’

A bit of prestige television comes on a Monday for once instead of a Sunday. 

“The Gilded Age” (HBO, 9 p.m.) comes from the writer of “Downton Abbey” and its two hour premiere is full of the kind of sprightly classical music and very busy happenings around Fifth Avenue mansions circa 1885 as it introduces a large and talented cast led by Christine Baranski as a stern dowager type, who with her cheerier spinster sister (Cynthia Nixon) take in a niece (Louise Jacobson, Meryl Streep’s youngest daughter) about the time a scheming new money social climber (Carrie Coon) is moving into the huge Stanford White-designed mansion across the street with her ruthless tycoon husband (Morgan Spector).

The old New York setting is breathtaking, even as the initial plot is right out of Real Housewives — everybody snubs the newbie’s lavish party. With this many characters and this much talent, there’s a lot of story left to tell. 

The new broadcast drama, “Promised Land” (ABC, 10 p.m.) is another one of those “Succession”-style family business shows set in a Latinx family in Sonoma Valley. In this, it’s rather like the 2007 series “Cane” (about a rum and sugarcane empire of a Cuban-American family). This one stars John Ortiz as the paterfamilias determining the future of his business; Bellamy Young plays an ex who is scheming to get a piece of it as a group of offspring battle among themselves for control. It doesn’t look terrible.

An unusual new addition to prime time is the eight-episode documentary series “March” (CW, 8 p.m.), following the activities of the Prairie View A&M University Marching Band, the Marching Storm. 

What a shock. Apparently, Hugh Hefner was a control freak who didn’t always have women’s interest uppermost in his mind, according to the new documentary series “Secrets of Playboy” (A&E, 9 and 10 p.m.).