No wonder Netflix has chosen the story of the wealthiest family in Ireland in the late 19th century for its latest epic drama.
They made their fortune by inventing one of the most popular beers in the world, but their lives were blighted by scandal and sexual shenanigans.
Now House Of Guinness, created by Peaky Blinders writer Steven Knight, tells their extraordinary tale… and it’s being dubbed ‘The Crown… with beer’.
But there’s more to the eight-parter than booze and money.
Set in the 1860s, it follows four Guinness siblings fighting over the family fortune after their father dies, which gives it a touch of Succession, while the series also explores the lives of the poor workers at their brewery, echoing the downtrodden foundrymen in Peaky Blinders.
As the brains behind sweeping dramas such as SAS Rogue Heroes and A Thousand Blows, Steven Knight is known for taking true stories and giving them a spin, filling in the gaps with his own imagination then peppering the scripts with expletives and punky contemporary music.
Dubbed The Crown… with beer, Netflix’s House Of Guinness follows four siblings fighting over the family fortune after their father dies (pictured is star James Norton)
Dervla Kirwan describes the show as ‘riotous and sexy’, while James Norton says, ‘It’s about power, sex and desire’
And House Of Guinness is no different. Not only does it kick off in anarchic style with a raucous Republican anthem from controversial Irish rappers Kneecap, the basic story is very much rooted in truth.
And there was plenty of drama in late 19th-century Dublin to draw on. The brewery was the subject of violent demonstrations by the Catholic church, who were opposed to alcohol, and the Republican Fenian party hated the family because they were Protestant and pro-British rule.
Plus, as Knight points out, many of the Guinnesses were eccentrics with a wild side. Between them, the four siblings rack up scandals including extra-marital affairs, substance abuse, illegal homosexuality and vote-rigging.
‘I’m in awe of their zest for life, their lust for life, often literally,’ says Knight. ‘They were very wealthy, they aspired to be part of the aristocracy, but there’s just something in that family that meant it was never going to happen – they were naturally wild and they were never going to conform.
Throughout the family history, all the way up to the present, the Guinnesses have flirted with all kinds of political ideas, hanging out with artists, drunks and drug-takers. They remind me of the Kennedys.’
It was the company founder Arthur Guinness who created the dark brown porter that made the family name in the late 18th century, but the series opens 100 years later when they owned vast estates throughout Dublin, County Mayo and Wicklow, including the 26,000-acre Ashford Castle.
It’s now 1868 and the patriarch Sir Benjamin Guinness has died, leaving £1.1m (about £160m today), yet we learn that the brewery has not been bequeathed solely to his homosexual eldest son Arthur (Anthony Boyle), but must be shared with his youngest son Edward (Louis Partridge), meaning the brothers must reluctantly work together.
Their other brother Benjamin (Fionn O’Shea) and sister Anne (Emily Fairn) aren’t included as Benjamin is addicted to alcohol, laudanum and gambling, and Anne is married.
Creator Steven Knight said: ‘Throughout the family history, all the way up to the present, the Guinnesses have flirted with all kinds of political ideas, hanging out with artists, drunks and drug-takers’
Add in the brewery’s womanising foreman Rafferty (James Norton), who is enmeshed in the family dynamic, and the scene is set for conflict and betrayal. ‘I’m sure a lot of people would think, ‘I wish my dad had left me the Guinness brewery,’ but they go through a lot and there are many occasions where they wish their name was anything but Guinness,’ says Knight.
Ballykissangel star Dervla Kirwan plays the siblings’ Aunt Agnes, who appoints herself matriarch of the family after Benjamin’s death and tries to protect their reputation while the heirs are doing their best to destroy it with affairs and hedonism.
Agnes represents the generational shift that was happening in Ireland at the time, particularly for women who were beginning to rise up despite not having the vote or control of their own finances.
‘Agnes is beginning to realise she’s becoming redundant, and that’s terrifying for her,’ says Kirwan. ‘All the children are of age now and they’ll be married off. And then what? No one wants to live without purpose. It’s a recipe for depression, gin and disaster.’
She sets up a marriage of convenience between Arthur and Lady Olivia Hedges (Danielle Galligan), an aristocrat who then goes on to have an affair with Rafferty. ‘Olivia’s a free spirit, but one shackled to a very grim reality,’ says Galligan.
‘She’s expected to resolve her family’s financial problems by marrying well, but she knows she’s marrying into a sexless marriage. She’s fighting for the right to find love and sex elsewhere while keeping everyone happy with the financial arrangement. It’s a power move.’
Arthur is initially reluctant to return to Dublin from London where he has been able to lead a more cosmopolitan and anonymous life, hanging out in ‘Molly Houses’, unofficial meeting places for homosexuals.
In one scene, he’s caught at one such venue with his lover and has to run from the police. ‘We know Arthur is gay, and at that time this would have been a potentially hazardous, reputation-destroying secret,’ says Kirwan.
Anthony Boyle says the secret is always on Arthur’s mind, particularly the consequences if he were to be found out. ‘You could get 20 years’ hard labour for being gay in Ireland then.
‘It’s what Oscar Wilde was forced to do. We’ve come a long way, thank God.’ In the series, as in real life, Arthur reluctantly becomes a politician and brings the family together to push through social reform for their workers and give back some of their family wealth.
Arthur’s sister Anne also indulges in extra-marital sex, unhappy with her reverend husband 11 years her senior.
As the brains behind sweeping dramas such as SAS Rogue Heroes and A Thousand Blows, Steven Knight is known for taking true stories and giving them a spin
This leads her into conflict with Aunt Agnes, who wants her to be a proper wife. Emily Fairn, who plays Anne, says one of the highlights of the shoot was playing opposite Kirwan in a tea room scene where both are drinking champagne and smiling politely because they’re in public – all while shooting daggers at each other.
‘Anne and Agnes show two very different versions of a woman at that time,’ she says. ‘Agnes believes a woman’s job is to get married, be a mother and do what her husband wants.
She even says, ‘We’ll sit and drink gin and gossip about our relatives, and that’ll be our lovely life.’ Anne thinks, ‘That’s so boring. I don’t want that to be my life.’
While parts of the story are fictionalised, Knight was keen that the look and feel of the drama should be as accurate as possible, and that meant filming outside Dublin.
The original Guinness family home, Iveagh House in Dublin, is now the Irish Foreign Office and so had to be re-created at a studio in Manchester, while the brewery was rebuilt in Liverpool’s Stanley Dock, which – with its cobbles and old warehouses – looks more like 1860s Dublin than modern Dublin itself.
On any one day there could be up to 400 supporting artists on set as well as horses, coal furnaces and steam machines to show how the brewery would have appeared, and the set smells of beer and horse manure.
Yet as Michael McElhatton (Roose Bolton in Game Of Thrones) points out, the brewery may look old-fashioned to us now but at the time it would have been ‘like the Google building today – all the latest technology’.
Norton says the attention to detail made his job easy. ‘You could taste the grit, the industry, the sweat.
Then you’d go to a stately home for a drawing-room scene – all refinement and elegance. The two worlds bleed into each other. The grime of the brewery infects the polish of the upper class – and vice versa.’
He was particularly awed by the costume department’s efforts to create a look for ex-military Rafferty, one of the few fictional characters.
‘They took a real 19th-century medal and stitched the ribbon part into my coat pocket, so every time I reached for a cigarette I could feel it. No viewer will ever see that, but I knew it was there. That’s the sign of a great costume designer – they give you those internal details.’
The idea for the series first came from a real member of the family, Ivana Lowell, whose grandmother Maureen Guinness was one of three brewery heiresses known in the 1930s as the Golden Guinness Girls.
‘I was in Ireland one Christmas with some of the family, having a bit to drink and watching Downton Abbey,’ recalls Ivana.
‘I looked around the room at all these eccentric faces and I thought, ‘Our family would make such a good television drama.’ It’s got all the elements. And the best thing about it – it’s all true.’
Lowell sold the idea to production company Kudos and took them to Ireland, introducing them to her cousins who told stories about their ancestors.
When Knight was brought in to write the scripts, he instantly understood why the Guinness family would make such a good drama.
Ivana says she’s happy with the balance of the series in including both the scandalous and the philanthropic aspects of her family, and in balancing accuracy with make-believe.
‘This isn’t a documentary,’ she says. ‘It doesn’t have to be completely realistic. We had to give it some oomph. Benjamin and Arthur were real symbols of Ireland.
‘They were rich, yes, but they actually cared, so you’ve got all the drama and the soapiness, but the philanthropy is there too. We’re not painted as saints, but you do get a sense of how much they did for Ireland.’
Yet, as Knight has said, the appeal of the Guinness family is not just their social and political status, nor their wealth, but also their love of parties and flirting with scandal.
Knight has said, the appeal of the Guinness family is not just their social and political status, nor their wealth, but also their love of parties and flirting with scandal
Kirwan describes the show as ‘riotous and sexy’, while James Norton says, ‘It’s about power, sex and desire – the messy, knotty parts of life.’ Indeed, while Norton’s career has seen him play all types from a psychopathic murderer in Happy Valley to a nice-guy vicar in Grantchester, House Of Guinness perhaps shows a side to him that hasn’t quite been tapped into before. Rafferty is conniving, mysterious, and more than a little bit sexy.
‘Half the scenes start with Rafferty silhouetted in a window, smoking a cigarette, music swelling – and then I just turn, deliver a line, and we’re done!’ chuckles Norton.
‘Everyone’s scared of him. No one’s scared of me as James, so it’s quite nice to walk through the set and be feared!’
Ivana insists she’s thrilled with the way the show has come out, although she admits it may be for the best that some of her family are no longer alive to watch it.
‘The first day of shooting was Benjamin Guinness’s funeral,’ she says. ‘There was a person playing dead Benjamin and I thought, ‘Oh my God. Who would’ve thought I’d be attending my great-great-great-grandfather’s funeral 200 years later?’ I just wish my grandmother were alive to see it. Though maybe it’s best she’s not!’
House Of Guinness streams from 25 September on Netflix.
