Stream It Or Skip It?

We’ve enjoyed a Guinness or two (thousand) over the years. We’ve also been to St. James Gate in Dublin and toured the original Guinness brewery. But we had no idea just how dominant the brewery was back before the days of contract breweries and globalization. A new series by Steven Knight is a fictionalized account of how the brewery thrived under the heirs of Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness after his death.

Opening Shot: As we watch the process of Guinness stout being made, we see words on the screen that mention ingredients, the type of barrels it’s stored in, then the words say “FAMILY”, “MONEY”, “REBELLION” and “POWER.”

The Gist: “ST. JAMES GATE. DUBLIN, IRELAND. MAY 27, 1868.” It’s the funeral of Dublin beer magnate Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness (Sean O’Callaghan), and a group of Guinness brewery workers, led by foreman Sean Rafferty (James Norton), are ready for the procession that will take Guinness’ body to the church. They need to protect the body because outside the brewery gates are two groups of violent protesters: Temperance advocates and revolutionaries who object to Guinness’ cozy relationship with the British government as a member of Parliament.

“IVEAGH HOUSE. GUINNESS FAMILY HOME.” Guinness’ four adult children are waiting for his body to arrive. Arthur (Anthony Boyle), the oldest son, has recently come back to Dublin from spending five years in London, to the point where his brogue has been tamped down by a more aristocratic British accent. Edward (Louis Partridge), the youngest, has been working at the brewery since his teens and he knows the business inside and out. Anne Plunket (Emily Fairn) is the oldest sibling, already married off to an aristocrat, but she also has a strong moral center and a nose for making connections. Middle son Benjamin (Fionn O’Shea) has gambling and substance addiction problems.

Even before their father is in the ground, there’s some maneuvering for the empire he’s leaving behind. Arthur assumes he’ll get the brewery, given that he’s the oldest son. Edward negotiates a plan where Arthur sells him the brewery for a significant chunk of the profits.

As Guinness’ body arrives at the church, the Irish Republic revolutionaries, led by Patrick Cochrane (Seamus O’Hara) show up as well; Sean and his crew do what they need to do, which includes throwing punches, to get Guinness inside.

Patrick’s sister Ellen (Niamh McCormack) hates the brute-force methods his brother and his ilk use; she’d rather blackmail the Guinness children by using their secrets against them. But as she goes about doing just that, trying to get dirt from the wharf owner that works for the family, Patrick and his goons set fire to the barrels the family uses to ship their product.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? House Of Guinness is Succession crossed with The Gilded Age and The Buccaneers.

Our Take: Steven Knight (Peaky Blinders, A Thousand Blows) created House Of Guinness based on the true stories of the members of the Guinness family that inherited the giant brewery from Sir Benjamin Lee Guinness. He not only has fictionalized their stories in order to give him some narrative freedom, but he’s also infused the show with a modern Celtic rock soundtrack and other touches that make the show more than just a sleepy period drama.

What he’s also done is establish exactly who the Guinness heirs are by the end of the first episode. What writers who are as experienced as Knight know is that you don’t need a ton of exposition to let viewers know what the main characters of a show are about. So he concentrates the exposition on setting up the situation in Dublin in 1868, with the Guinness brewery already dominating beer sales and Irish independence from England being the prevailing issue among the population.

From here, as the Guinness siblings find out who their father actually left the brewery to — which will be a surprise to them — there is certainly going to be a lot of maneuvering among them, and probably bigger rifts in their relationships than might already be there. Sean is also a factor here, as he pretty much ran the brewery when Sir Benjamin was alive, and his status is going to change as the younger generation takes over.

But the big push is how the siblings steer the brewery, which is a major driver of the economy in Dublin, through this revolutionary period, especially when the family has had such a close relationship with the British government for so many years.

It will also be interesting to see how the siblings deal with the pressure, especially young Benjamin. His character is the most at risk, given his addictions and the fact that he’s already willing to shoot the people he owes money to before they shoot him first. But he’s also the least interested in the business or the trappings of being a part of a prominent family. We’re also interested in seeing the women in this narrative — Anne and Ellen — navigate their place in their respective worlds, given the usual roles women had in 19th century society and life.

Sex and Skin: None in the first episode.

Parting Shot: As rain pours down on the barrel fire, Sean lights a cigarette on a burning piece of wood, looks up in the sky and says, “Maybe the fuckers do have God on their side after all.”

Sleeper Star: We’ll give this to Emily Fairn as Anne, mainly because we know that she’s got a lot of passion roiling under her society woman exterior, as we see in a scene with Sean after she pays him and his men for protecting their father’s body.

Most Pilot-y Line: None we could find. At times, the Celtic rock on the soundtrack becomes oppressive, and we hope that’s scaled back a bit as the season goes along.

Our Call: STREAM IT. The first episode of House Of Guinness shows more than tells, and that’s because of Steven Knight’s expert skills in making his characters vibrant right out of the gate.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.