"You can just see the light bulb going on over the Netflix executives' heads when they heard the pitch: "A late-Victorian family determined to maximize their money and power? Warring siblings vying for control of the patriarch's empire? Sign us up!" The new House of Guinness series, based on the true rise and rise of the Dublin-based brewing family, bears the hallmarks of creator Steven Knight's muscular storytelling as seen in his earlier shows like SAS Rogue Heroes and, especially, Peaky Blinders -fast-moving, extended action sequences, lashings of sex and fighting, and anachronistic musical scores incorporating metal and rap."
"Like Peaky Blinders, the series features an enigmatic, self-contained, ridiculously good-looking figure not averse to a bit of ultra-violence. In HOG this is Rafferty (James Norton), the Guinnesses' factory foreman/head of security/enforcer/lust object of the Guinness ladies. Unfortunately for Knight, the real mid-Victorian Guinnesses were not gangsters, nor did they lead particularly colorful private lives, so he has had to do a certain amount of embroidering (each episode starts with the disclaimer "This is a fiction inspired by true stories"). However, it's likely the current Guinness management didn't object to a bit of besmirching past company directors' respectability in return for the show's orgy of product placement."
House of Guinness transforms the Dublin brewing family's history into a stylized, action-driven dramatization that borrows heavily from Steven Knight's Peaky Blinders template. The series employs fast-moving action sequences, explicit sex and violence, contemporary musical choices, and modern profanity placed in a Victorian setting. An invented enforcer character, Rafferty, serves as a charismatic violent focal point. The real Guinness family led comparatively restrained lives, so substantial fictionalizing and a disclaimer accompany the episodes. The production includes conspicuous product placement and centers sibling power struggles and inheritance tensions for dramatic effect.
Read at Slate Magazine
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