Netflix is no stranger to the power of a good period drama – in fact, many observers would say that a huge part of the global breakout success of Peaky Blinders was down to the fact that it hit Netflix at quite an early stage, helping it become a phenomenon in the US. Now, as always, I can’t prove that it’s trying to recreate that show’s appeal exactly, but what it’s unveiled looks uncannily familiar.
House of Guinness takes the action away from Birmingham, and instead looks at an Irish dynasty, the home of the world-famous stout beer. Set between Dublin and New York as the Guinness family attempts to grow its brewing empire, in the aftermath of Sir Benjamin Guinness, who turned the beer into a market force.
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According to Netflix’s brief summary of the show, his last will and testament will leave his four children and heirs in very interesting positions as they attempt to steer the empire he left behind, with a presumable question mark over which of them will take the lead and fully replace him. That makes it sound like the show could borrow from HBO’s supreme Succession, too, with themes of ambition and betrayal in an inter-familial setting.
Netflix has a bit of a template in place for how it unveils and teases big new shows like this – and we’re only at the first stage right now. We’ve had the images you can view in the gallery above, but nothing more. Pretty soon, I’d expect a glitzy teaser trailer for the show, before we then get a more fulsome trailer a couple of weeks after that.
House of Guinness will hit the streaming platform on 25 September, after all, so there isn’t actually all that much time left before it arrives in just over a month. Exactly what sort of tone it’s aiming for will become clearer once we’ve had a teaser at least. That might help us to gauge whether it’ll help Netflix maintain its position as one of the biggest and best streaming services on the market right now.
