Is ‘House of Guinness’ based on a real story? What is real and the fictional in the Netflix program.

Netflix’s Guinness house He takes the spectators to the 1860s Dublin to follow the brothers Arthur, Edward, Anne and Benjamin after the death of his father, Benjamin Guinness, the grandson of the founder of the Guinness brewery.

The eight -part miniseries was launched on September 25 and was created by Steven Knight, who was behind the very acclaimed British historical drama Peaky Blindersand the heiress of Guinness Ivana Lowell.

Lowell was looking Downton Abbey Almost a decade ago, when he thought: “Our family history was much more juicy and interesting than this, in addition, everything was true,” he told the BBC. That is why he decided to write a proposal for a family -based television program, which landed on the Knight desktop six years later.

While a second season has not yet been confirmed, Knight said he would love to continue building the show around the family.

“In a perfect world, I would like to take it to the twentieth century,” he told Screenrant. “If you even look at a superficial look at the history of the Guinness family, they continue to throw these dramas. They continue to make these mistakes. They continue to do these wonderful things.”

Guinness house It is not a documentary, but it does not move too far from its roots. We take a look at what is true and the fiction of the new Netflix series.

Is ‘House of Guinness’ based on a real story?

In general, the program, which focuses on the Guinness brothers after the death of his father, is based on history since Knight was inspired by Lowell’s stories.

“Ivana is an absolute mine of information and stories not told about the family that goes back to years,” Knight wrote in the program press, according to the BBC. “Knowing her was the best imaginable research because you not only got the stories, you obtained (family) trust and the spirit and light madness.”

The plot combines a historical fact with a fictional drama to improve its surveillance capacity. When Knight told Netflix’s Tudum, Lowell’s stories served as “steps” to “fill the gaps” of the plot.

The main characters are based on real people

The main cast of the Guinness brothers is based on the real family members after the death of Benjamin Guinness in May 1868. The four children, called Arthur (Anthony Boyle), Edward (Louis Partridge), Anne Plunket (Emily Fairn) and Benjamin (Fionn O’Shea), all existed.

Much of what the characters pursue and achieve in the series is also historically precise, according to the Irish Emigration Museum. Arthur and Edward received joint control about the Guinness brewery in their father’s will; Anne left no property of the brewery, but was financially “planned through his dowry”; And the youngest brother, Benjamin, inherited fewer actions from the brewery compared to his older brothers, but it is not clear why.

Political and religious tensions were high in Dublin at that time

Political tensions are an important plot point throughout the series, which reflects the situation in Ireland at that time. The Brotherhood Fenia and the Irish Republican Brotherhood were true nationalist groups that advocated an independent Ireland, which was still part of Great Britain at that time.

Religion was also a great source of tension throughout the country, since more Irish wanted to identify themselves as Catholics as a way of challenging the association with Great Britain and fighting for independence. Many of the people who identify Anglicanas in Ireland were rich, including the true Guinness family, which identified as Angloirlands Protestants.

Although there is no evidence that the Guinness family was specifically directed by these groups, the negative economic effects caused by Irish famine in the 1840s remained a big problem, the Ireland emigration museum reported.

Fictitious characters and stories help advance the plot

While the Guinness were real people, Knight said he needed to introduce some fictional characters to help explain certain plot points and motivations.

“These people are real people. The events, the main events, the main documented events are real,” Knight told Radio Times. “In the middle … it is very difficult to obtain the opinion or the nuances in terms of the character. So those are the things that you have, like a playwright, you have to create and create who the characters are, why they make those decisions.”

Knight added several fictional characters outside the immediate family, including Sean Rafferty (James Norton), Byron Hedges (Jack Gleeson) and phenomena leaders, Patrick (Seamus O’Hara) and Ellen Cochrane (Niamh McCormack).

In addition to the fictitious characters, Guinness house It includes several points of the plot that are not historically precise.

For example, at the beginning, It is said that the will of the old Benjamin declared that if Arthur or Edward refused to direct the brewery, then none of them would obtain their inheritance. This did not really happen: the testament said that the brothers had the option to buy us from the business if one of them did not want to help manage the brewery.

Edward was not the reason why Guinness arrived in the United States, beer was exported for the first time to South Carolina, not in New York, in October 1817, which was 30 years before Edward was born. And although Arthur received a threat of public death as his character at the end of the program, it was not during his second campaign of Parliament. They passed two years before, in 1872, after Arthur had issued a correction to an editor at the Freeman’s Journal.