Published Jun 4, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT
In over three years at Collider, senior author Jake has now penned over 3000 articles covering a wide range of TV and film for the resources, lists, utilities, news, and interview teams. Alongside interviewing stars such as Selin Hizli, Rose Ayling-Ellis, Harlan Coben, and Chelsea Peretti, Jake was lucky enough to visit the set of Aardman and Netflix’s Wallace and Gromit: A Vengeance Most Fowl in 2024, getting the chance to chat with four-time Academy Award winner Nick Park and Merlin Crossingham. Jake has also worked for other publications, including Agents of Fandom. You can also hear Jake every week as the resident film and TV journalist on Track Radio.
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As the streaming wars intensify, everyone wants a slice of the period drama pie. Led by the enormous success of Netflix’s flagship series Bridgerton, it’s clear just how big the market is for costume dramas, especially those boasting romance, theatrics, and extravagance in abundance. In its most recent fourth season, Bridgerton showed no signs of aging, actually improving on its previous installment. Season 4, Part 1 was watched by an impressive 6.4 million households during the live plus three-day period, marking a 52% boost over Season 3’s premiere, and helping the show reach #1 in the streaming ranks of 83 different countries.
But Bridgerton isn’t the only streaming-favorite costume drama growing in popularity. HBO’s answer to the Shondaland series, The Gilded Age, debuted its long-awaited third season in mid-2025 to both critical acclaim and streaming success. The third-season finale, which premiered on August 10, scored a series-high five million viewers across all platforms in just three days, almost doubling the 2.7 million viewers reported for the season premiere. Throughout Season 3, the series climbed to new heights and kept breaking its own records, with the upcoming fourth season, expected to debut later this year, likely to continue that trend.
Recently, a first look at the fourth season was revealed in HBO’s sizzle reel for their upcoming productions, giving fans an early glimpse at Bertha (Carrie Coon), Larry (Harry Richardson), Marian (Louisa Jacobson), Peggy (Denée Benton), and more back in lavish action. Following the release of this first look, The Gilded Age has returned to the American streaming charts. At the time of writing, the** series is one of the ten most-streamed shows on HBO Max in the U.S.,** a list unsurprisingly still topped by the controversial third season of Euphoria.
Your answers have pointed to one fictional hospital above all others. This is the ward your instincts, your temperament, and your particular brand of dysfunction were built for.
You are built for the most unsparing version of emergency medicine television has ever shown — one that puts you inside a single fifteen-hour shift and doesn’t let you look away.
You are the person who keeps the whole floor running — not the most brilliant in the room, but possibly the most essential.
You came to medicine with your whole self — your ambition, your emotions, your relationships, your history — and you have never quite managed to leave any of it at the door.
You are drawn to the problem above everything else — the symptom that doesn’t fit, the diagnosis hiding underneath the obvious one.
You understand that medicine is tragic and absurd in almost equal measure — and that the only sane response is to hold both of those things at the same time.
The third season of The Gilded Age didn’t just show the series going from strength to strength in viewing figures. After a well-received first outing and universal praise for the second, the third received gushing reviews from almost all, leading to a near-perfect, series-high 96% rating on review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. In a review of the third season for Collider, Carly Lane praised the series for not playing it safe and ushering in an “exciting future for The Gilded Age.”
*The Gilded Age *is available to stream on HBO Max. Stay tuned to Collider for more streaming stories.
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Deborah Kampmeier, Salli Richardson-Whitfield