When Netflix drops House of Guinness tomorrow, viewers will witness more than just another period drama about wealthy dynasties. This is the story of Ireland’s most iconic brewing family, whose real-life scandals, power struggles and generational secrets have never received the small-screen treatment — until now.
Is ‘House Of Guinness’ Based On A True Story?
The eight-part drama centres on one of the most consequential moments in the Guinness empire: the death of Sir Benjamin Guinness in 1868 and the explosive aftermath of his will reading. Benjamin wasn’t just any brewery owner – he was the grandson of Arthur Guinness, who famously signed a 9,000-year lease on St. James’s Gate Brewery in 1759, and the man who transformed the family business into a global phenomenon. His death didn’t just mark the end of an era; it ignited a family feud that would determine the fate of the world’s most famous stout.
Speaking to Netflix’s Tudum, the show’s creator Steven Knight described the series as fundamentally about ‘a family who happens to be the inheritors of the biggest brewery in the world’ facing a singular challenge: ‘Don’t screw it up’. The second priority? ‘To make Guinness even bigger.’ But behind this corporate succession drama lies a much more complex web of sibling rivalry, manipulation and strategic betrayal that defined 19th-century Dublin society.
The plot may well remind some viewers of Succession, the award-winning HBO series loosely based on media mogul Rupert Murdoch’s relationship with his four oldest children. As in that tale, in House of Guinness the heirs must cope with the posthumous wishes of their patriarch, plus tumultuous conditions in 19th-Century Ireland – with the societal ruptures fuelled by the dominance of the prosperous Protestant elite, to which the family belonged, over the impoverished Catholic majority proving a consistent problem.
The premise of House of Guinness was inspired by a treatment that Guinness cousin Ivana Lowell wrote and shared with Peaky Blinders creator Stephen Knight. ‘They were all so young, and their father left them both huge responsibility and a huge legacy,’ Lowell told the BBC. ‘Each was forced to find a path.’ Lowell is the daughter of novelist Lady Caroline Blackwood, and the granddaughter of Maureen, Marchioness of Dufferin and Ava, was one of the trio of ‘golden Guinness girls’, who were well-known in British high society in the 1920s.
