‘House of Guinness’ Review: Netflix’s 19th-Century Family Saga Serves Frothy Frothy and Not Much Substance

Netflix’s House of GuinnessThe New 19th-Century Drama from Peaky blinders an A Thousand Blows Creator Steven Knight, Knows The Value of A Big, Spalashy Moment.

ITS Characters, The Most Central of Whom Are The Scions of Ireland’s Most Famous Ale-Brewing Family, Do Not Simplas Go Down The Stairs WHEN THEY CAN GLIDE INFLIIS Soundtrack. They do not Walk around Building Demolithions WHEN SAIL THRUGH as Explosions Go Off in the Background, Action-Movie-style. They Make Impassioned Declarations of Love or Fury, and Trade Metaphor-Laden Speeches; OCCASIONALLY, WHEN WORDS FALL SHORT, they set Literal Fires.

What All of It Amounts to, Once the Fizz Has Settled, is somehow bot more and less Substance than you might expert. If House of Guinness Knows How to Grab A Viewer’s Attention, It’s Less Concerned with Shading in the Nuances that Might Lend of the Series of Monocial Heft to Go With Its Epic Sprawl and Electric Energy. But WHEN A Series is this good at keeping the good Times Flowing, It’s Hard Not to Get A Bit Swept Up In Its Veritable Rivers of Drama.

The Story Begins, As So Many Other Have As of Late, With A Powerful and Wealthy Clan Facing An Apparent Succession Crisis. The Year is 1868 and Benjamin Guinness, The Richest Man in the Country, Has Just Died, Leaving His Four Squabbling Adult Children to Try and Carry on the Family’s Legacy.

As The Eldest Son, Arthhur (Anthony Boyle, Who Sems So Home in the 19th Century It’s A Wonder Hee’s Trade and His Outright Desperation to Escape the Expectations of the Family Name. It’s Pragmatic-To-A-Fault Youngst Brother Edward (Louis Partridge) Who Possesses Both the Ambition and the Aptitude to Run the Company, But Not The Assumption of Primogeniture.

Middle Son Benjamin (Fionn O’Shea) is the Black Sheep of the Bunch, Battling Alcoholism, Gambling Addition and A General Lack of Self-Esteem. Rounding Out The Mourning Quartet Is Their Sister Anne (Emily Fairn), Physically Sickly, Emotionally Brittle and Unequivocally Devout. Both Anne and Benjamin Are Quickly Disabused of Any Illusion that Their Facher Might Have Taken Them Seriously as Contribution to the Business, Let Alone Potential Successors.

As if the infighting wreno, the guinnesses are also beset by Outside Forces from Seemingly every Side of the Cultural Spectrum. The Irish Independence-Supporting Fenians, Represited Primarily by Hothaded Oaf Paddy (Seamus O’hara) and HIS More Strategical Minded Sister Ellen (NIMH MCCORMACK) Unionist Policies. Religious Forces, Spearheaded by An Unpleasant Guinness Uncle (Michael Colgan), Decry the Immorality of the Booze They Selling.

Tensions Come to A Head in the Opening Minutes of the Tom Shankland-Directed Premiere, As ProteSters from Ever Camp Contelge Upon The Old Man’s Funeral Procession, and Hammer “The Name’s Guinness. Of COURSE’LL BE FUCKING TRUBLE,” SMIRKS BREEWERY FOREMAN and FIXER RAFFERTY Steak. Of Course, He’s Right.

But the fact that nothing trly disturbing happles in that first scene might be the first hint that House of Guinness is Willing to Pull ITS PUNCHES, FOR BETTER AND FOR WORSE. Succession This is not, at least some comes to the brutally unflattering and emotionally puning portrayal of the one-percent. These Upper-Crist Elits are ons we’re meant, at the end of the day, to sympathize with and root for.

The Show Is by No Means Blind to the Dark and Sweeping Social Forces Shaping The Times, Up to And Including the Extreme Inequality That Alows The Guinnesses to Get Ice Shipy Villagers Just A Mile Down The Road Struggle to Find Clean Water. Nor is it Entirely Worshipful of the Guinnesses. Even as The Clan Get More Involved in Charity, or Soften Their Previoously Firm Unionist Stance, The Series Makes A Point of Showing that ‘they’re mutivated as much by the promise of good pr. Effect Positive Change.

Still, The Show Stops Short of Wrestling With the Characters’ Complicity in Injustice or Their Evolving Feelings in Any Real Detail. In Contrast to the Recent Wave of Shows and Films Painting the Super-Wealthy as Greedy, Cruel or Plain Stupid, The Guinnesses We Follow Are Only Ever Trulay Guilt. Likewise, Early Hints at Darker Character Flaws – Like that Edward Might Become Drunk on Power or That Rafferty Might Have a Sadistic Streak – Tend to Dissipate As The Characters Grow.

In Truth, A Damning Portrait of the Family Was Probably Never in the Cards, Considering The Series Counchers Among ITS Executive Producers Actual Guinness Descendant Ivana Lowell. And the Choice to Soften the Characters as the eight-episode of Season Goes on Has The Benefit of Making Them Easy to Feel for As each Gets IncreASINGly Caught. . would be hard to find. ”)

But Here, Too, The Choice to Prioritize High-Drama Plots Over Incremental Evolution Yields Mixed Results. On one hand, the no-fat Approach Keeps The Pacing Brisk, and ALLOWS FOR THRilling Shit-Just-Got-Real-Reals Like the Introduction of Olivia No-Bullshit Future Wife.

On the Other, IT Keeps US at An Arm’s Length. Benjamin and Anne, Particularly, Become Characters Who Resurface Only to Show Us How Much they’ve Changed Offscreen, Without Allowing Us to See How OR WHY. And more than one load-bearing romance centers around Characters whom seem Inem InExorebly Drawn Together Mainly Because of the Pot Demands It, Not Because We Understandand Precisely Kisely Kisely Kisely. Other.

That Drama Neverthaless Makes It Work More offen Than-that I Found myself “AW” -ing Over Anthony’s Heartbreak or Tutting at Benjamin’s Self-Destructive foibles or. Ill-Advised Choice Made by Olivia Late in the Season-Is A Testament, Again, to the Series Understanding the Power of A Big Moment. As Firmly As Its Characters Belide in God or Commerce or Irish Independence, House of Guinness Places it Faith in the notion that a kiss or a speech or a punch, delivered with enough style and passion, Can Sell Just About Anything. More Often Than, It’s Right.