Brewing Up a Storm

House of Guinness debuted on Netflix in late September. It is a long-anticipated sexy send up of the mysterious family that gave the Irish their pint of plain. And why not? The Guinness family are a celebrated and infamous family that have fascinated people for generations. The series tracks the exponential growth of the brewery. This growth paralleled the rise of the Fenian independence movement.

House of Guinness = Irish Cast

Right off the top, you must hand it to them, there will be no long suffering through bad accents in this production. They have a predominantly Irish cast.

The few times they stray, it is only to England with the likes of James Norton, who plays Sean Rafferty in the show. The actors have been exuberantly promoting the series, going on talk shows and doing very Irish things like splitting the G, like Louis Partridge did on Late Night with Seth Myers.

Irish Soundtrack

It’s not just the actors either. Listen to the soundtrack. It’s wonderful! There are bands featured that are easily recognizable, like Thin Lizzy.

Then there are some deep cuts that are long held Irish favorites, like The Stunning with “Brewing Up a Storm” at the beginning of episode five. I really loved hearing the Stunning. They have been knocking around Galway for years and being used in this has brought well-deserved attention to the music of these hometown favorites. There are a few Kneecap songs and then there are classics like the Clancy Brothers’

Irish Language

This is one, if not the best thing, about the series for me. There have been a few movies, like An Cailín Ciúin, The Quiet Girl, that have recently made in into rotation on streaming services, but they were fated to be buried and for select audiences. This series is in the Netflix top ten.

There is real Irish spoken in the scenes in which members of the Guinness family travel to Clonboo, which is in Connemara. The scenes there show how hard the area was hit by the famine. The people they encounter speak Irish, with some only speaking Irish. This is accurate.

Irish Subtitles

I was a few episodes in when I found out that this series was the first series in Netflix history to offer Irish subtitles. Did I go back? You bet I did! They are amazing!!

The subtitles go by quickly. It is fast-paced drama. This means you get a lot of everyday usable words.

While Irish is more regular than a lot of languages, you won’t learn it from this show. But you definitely can pick up a few words or cupla focal in Irish.

Location, Location, Location

As Anne Guinness travels to Clonboo on her way to Ashford, don’t be fooled. That countryside, for all the lush greenery on screen, is not Ireland. All the locations are in England and Wales. Of course, the Guinness family are associated with Ashford Castle, but there is no known affiliation with Clonboo, which is outside of Galway. It is on the way to Ashford Castle though.

The Guinness brewery scenes were filmed around Manchester, England. Dublin is too modern looking anymore.

Gorta Mor

The scenes in Clonboo were some of the clumsiest in the series in my opinion. It felt like the writers were trying to get a lot of exposition in about the Irish Famine or Gorta Mor, to an audience that they thought might not know much history.

The bilingual healing woman describes the famine to the clueless Anne Guinness and the American audience by proxy. Somehow, they believe that we know more about the Fenians than the famine.

Pensions

The Guinness company is famous for the innovations in employee benefits that the company either introduced or enriched to improve the lives of their workers. They did indeed introduce old age pensions, public housing and expanded to health care and more.

What this series does very well is show them not so much as benevolent bleeding hearts, but chess players. The Irish working class, fresh from the famine, were angry and feeling that they had little to lose. Their protests and fights for equality gained a new intensity at this time. The show does a good job of putting this all together in a subtle way.

The Guinness family were not rebels by any means. But they seemed to have a knack for self-preservation. They could read the room.

Their acts of kindness may well have had some genuine heart. But they also kept them from getting their ivory tower knocked out from under them. The benevolence made them appear of the people when that sentiment may have been more “meh” behind closed doors.

The Guinness Family

The family story invites much more speculation, as private lives do. But look at the words, private, personal – I am good with that. I understand the family has done the high wire act of living a very wealthy public life.

I know that it doesn’t seem too tough to many, and even to me sometimes. But look at how they end up and you know that it isn’t all roses. I don’t care if Arthur was gay. That seems to be the biggest “was he or wasn’t he?” speculative point in the series. I am content to view the story as a narrative and leave the private lives private.

It is sad if Arthur was blackmailed as the story shows. They all have poor rich kid story lines. Their position did not let any of them marry for love. But that might be the story that we want to see.

The one true public story is that Arthur was in a bribery scandal to win a Parliament seat. Bad judgement and insecurity were on display there since it seems he would have won on his own merit.

Is The House of Guinness worth your time? Absolutely. It is not really deep, more splashy stuff with some action.

It is very atmospheric and captures a feel for the time according to what I think anyway. I loved the Irish language in the show and will be watching it again just to follow the subtitles. But what I liked the best was how the series put everything together.

Guinness and the Fenians both rose from the ashes of the famine. I knew it, but it was really good to see it all together. Benevolence and desperation came together at the same company. Even fluff can serve a purpose!