The new Netflix series, House of Guinnesshad everything to please: a nice cast, slick photography and a story presented as a cross between Succession And Peaky Blinders. The immediate public success in the United States and the United Kingdom proves it: critics there praised a fresco “irresistible” (The Guardian) and “joyfully entertaining” (BBC). On Rotten Tomatoes, 89% of viewers even gave it a positive review.
Except that in Ireland, where the action of the series which follows the adventures of the Dublin brewing family Guinness takes place, the welcome is much cooler. Where the Anglo-Saxons see an elegant work, the Irish media are choked by a series that they consider caricatured, approximate and, worse still, insulting to the history of the country. “A rudimentary view of colonialism and a complete inability to understand who the Anglo-Irish were,” summed up the Irish Times bluntly, in a vitriolic criticism relayed by the Guardian.
It is also in the pages of the Irish daily that we find the most murderous criticism, describing one of the main protagonists, played by the Englishman James Norton, as “a steampunk Mr Tayto” –reference to the mascot character of a famous brand of Irish crisps with a top hat. As for the Fenian revolutionaries, adds the daily, they are presented as “real wild leprechauns”.
The Irish Independent didn’t take much more with a grain of salt, calling the series “shock”a total failure multiplying clichés and destroying all authenticity. In its report, the newspaper mocks the swear-filled dialogues and sloppy plots: “The producers make it clear that it is fiction. But most of our historical accounts are already fiction, and dangerous at that. We don’t need to add any more.”
Halloween leprechauns
Created by Steven Knight, the screenwriter of Peaky Blindersand filmed mainly in Liverpool, House of Guinness is very loosely inspired by real history: the death in 1868 of a patriarch of the Guinness dynasty, leaving his four children to take over the reins of a brewery that had become a global empire. THE show claims its status as fiction “inspired by a true story”, adopting a rock aesthetic, with pieces from Fontaines DC or Kneecap on the soundtrack.
Abroad, this bias is attractive, NPR judging for example that Steven Knight “knows perfectly how to bring historical dramas to life”. But in Ireland, social networks do not share this opinion at all. On Reddit, a user protests against grotesque clothing choices: “Who validated these costumes? Why are the Fenians dressed up like Halloween leprechauns?”
It is not only the substance that is subject to Irish criticism, the form does not escape criticism either. Underlit shots, artificial dialogue, accumulation of sex scenes and explosions: “If we talk about a mixture between Succession And Peaky Blindersthen it lacks the humor of the first and the danger of the second”asserts the Irish Examiner.
The conclusion goes to the Irish Times which states that certain passages were so bad that they could divert spectators… towards a pint of Beamish, the rival beer of Guinness.
