★★★½ (3½ out of 4)
Behind the lush trappings of so-called polite New York society in HBO’s “The Gilded Age—Season 3" which starts unfurling once a week on Sunday—lies a cruelty no less violent for being couched in a velvet glove. The ladies and gentlemen of a period that spans from the late 1870s to the early 1900s could wound you with a glance or a declined invitation. Mark Twain coined the term Gilded Age, referring to an outward appearance of prosperity and wealth that really can’t mask the social, economic and political turbulence roiling under a thin veneer.