How long does it take you to decide if a streaming series is worth bingeing all the way to the end? One episode? Three? Five?
That’s why such series frontload the action, the parade of characters, the colorful settings and in the case of period pieces, costumes. The series opener has to be a grabber. Think of “Ozark,” still Netflix’s streaming gold standard.
At the very least, a series-narrative needs to get down to the business of really entertaining by the second or third installment.
The late 19th century Dublin, rural Ireland and New York Bowery of Netflix’s period piece “House of Guiness” is striking and lavishly recreated for the series, set during a tumultuous changing of the ruling guard of Ireland’s most famous export — the dark porter of St. James Gate, Guinness Beer.
But a jolt from the first episode seems all creator Steven Knight budgeted for, so his director Tom Shankland — who shot half of the eight episodes — fills the screen with lush sepia (gas lit) interiors, dark repetitive shots of the sweaty, fiery, steelworks-like brewery.
The second installment feels like a placeholder, with melodrama of the dullest, most predictable variety wrung out of this saga of “fiction inspired by true stories.” So…it’s based on Guinness lore and gossip?
The third episode didn’t hook me, either.
The professional reviewing standard for most series is one should watch at least two or three episodes to form an opinion you can back up with a review. Most reviewers, judging from the notices I glanced over just as I started this review of “House of Guinness,” seem to have only watched an episode before passing judgement. It’s lovely to look at, but were they just guessing it would get better?
I sat through a third installment, and then a fourth, which is half-consumed by Jane Austen-esque scheming at a marriage ball. But midway through that fourth piece of the puzzle, the series crackles to life as a chancer (Jack Gleeson of “Game of Thrones”) finagles his way into representing the company as it tries to make a mark in the Irish-hating New York and Eastern American seaboard market of that era.
Finally, all these introductions and all that table-setting for the intrigues to come is sort of set in motion –halfway into the series. It starts to play as if our attentions to it will be rewarded, if only partially. Eventually. We hope.
The characters are a grab bag of melodramatic tropes. There are personal secrets and intrigues among the four heirs to the brewing empire — Arthur, played by Anthony Boyle, is mustachioed and closeted, Benjamin (Fionn O’Shea) is a dissolute drunk, Anne is the daughter (Emily Fairn) struggling to negotiate or procreate herself into a place at the table and Edward (Louis Patridge) is the dashing, resentful middle brother who works seven days a week making sure the beer and the business come to a perfect head every time.
“Your name is Guinness. That is not WHO you are! That is WHAT you are!”
So we have a gay blade whose “secret” could be exposed and ruin them, a scheming drinker/gambler, sexual adventures outside of marriage and even the poshest of the posh drop F-bombs like they’re auditioning for “Trainspotting.”
The sountrack is packed with anachronistic Irish rock, pop and hip hop by the likes of The Mary Wallopers, Thin Lizzy, Kneecap and Fontaines D.C. to give the enterprise an angry sonic edge that the narrative rarely provides.
Players earn their keep with frequent costume changes — Gilded Age tuxes and dresses for the swells, 18th century uniforms for the servants and green coats and sashes and skirts and bowler hats for the Catholic majority, especially the Fenians, agitating for Irish independence.
In 1868, when the Guinness patriarch dies, Ireland is still under the thumb of the British and the Fenian Brotherhood, precursor to the IRA, is protesting and angling to make the Brits consider giving them their freedom. The brewery may be a huge employer, but it is a Protestant enterprise in a Catholic country, which the Fenians — just a generation removed from the British-overseen potato famine — see as an angle to exploit.
But at least one Guinness sees that angle first and vows to play it for electoral advantage. The family has historically run for a seat in Parliament, and the Irish working class (males) are newly enfranchised. And Fenian connections will do wonders with the Irish diaspora in America, if they’re to sell their beer there.
Series creator Knight scripted and directed the very fine “Locke” and wrote terrific thriller “Eastern Promises” and the abomination “Serenity.” One gives somebody with those bonafides the benefit of the doubt.
But while I have no problem with the fictionalizing and the era-inappropriate music, I couldn’t get into Knight’s over-reliance on “types” — the power-and-position-hungry wife (Danielle Galligan), the fiery redheaded Fenian agitator (Niamh McCormack) and the Guinness family’s two-fisted “fixer,” Mr. Rafferty (James Norton) whose ties go deeper than most of the siblings realize.
Knight uses types rather than casting famous Irish acting names and faces to invite us into the story. Norton is the most famous player in the cast. He and Gleeson make the strongest impressions.
Future billion dollar business aside (graphics do the exchange rate math between then and now), the stakes in this story never feel all that high. The characters never give us the impression they’ll be paupers if they don’t make the others bend to their will.
Pretty faces or not, there’s no “romance” to any of this and scene after scene plays as decoration rather than forcefully advancing the plot.
As someone who loves the beverage and visited Dublin’s most popular tourist attraction — the St. James Gate Brewery — I was inclined to love this, and I enjoyed a moment here and there.
The stout? “I taste the bitterness of Ireland” in it, an Irish-American opines.
Where’d they get the symbol that decorates every bottle, keg and can of their beer? It’s Brian Boru’s Harp, but you’d have to go to Wikipedia to understand its symbolism and know where Edward Guinness first saw it.
Granted, the real history’s not exactly sizzling. But giving it a half-arsed “Bridgerton” sexing up doesn’t really pay off. Not early on, not even a bit after than and not really to so great a degree as to recommend this very pretty Irish travelogue bathed in beer and fire.
Rating: TV-MA, violence, sexual situations, nudity, profanity
Cast: Anthony Boyle, Louis Partridge, Emily Fairn, Fionn O’Shea, Danielle Galligan, Jack Gleeson, Niamh McCormack and James Norton
Credits: Created by Steven Knight. A Netflix release.
Running time: Eight episodes @:53-:55 minutes each
