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The Arts Intel Report

A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler
A Cultural Compass
For the World Traveler

Gold Digger

When a young, handsome man marries a woman almost 30 years his senior, people are bound to wonder. And one of the many merits of Gold Digger—a six-episode series that is part family drama, part thriller—is that its star, Julia Ormond, who plays our heroine, Julia, doesn’t try to erase any signs of age to make her lover’s infatuation easier to accept: she is as plump, wrinkled, and careworn as any 60-year old divorcée would be after her husband runs off with her best friend. But Julia knows very little about charming Benjamin (Ben Barnes) before she invites him back to her country estate, in Devon. (The scenery is bewitching.) Her grown children and ex-husband are appalled; as the story unfolds, we find out more about the romance from many points of view. The series owes a lot to the Hitchcock classic Suspicion, but the class conflicts and family torments are exquisitely of the moment. —Alessandra Stanley

Julia Ormond and Ben Barnes in “Gold Digger.” Photo courtesy of Amazon.