'House of Guinness' Will Begin Serving in September 2025

Steven Knight is preparing to return to Netflix in a major way in the next two years with the Peaky Blinders feature film, followed by the long-awaited Season 7 of the gritty period drama. However, before that arrives, 2025 has given him multiple opportunities to make a second first impression on American audiences, including the September 2025 arrival of House of Guinness, coming to Netflix.

Knight's opportunities thus far in 2025 have been good, but timing has worked against him. His BBC smash hit, SAS Rogue Heroes, remains essentially unavailable to most Americans; it is available on MGM+, a streaming service half of which have never heard of, and no one subscribes to. This will probably not be the case in a couple of years, but right now, it remains a failed show in the U.S. Meanwhile, his genuinely fantastic A Thousand Blows was utterly overshadowed by stars Stephen Graham and Erin Doherty's other project, Adolescence.

But third time's the charm, as they say, and while this project, like A Thousand Blows, is a binge drop, it's coming to Netflix instead of Hulu, which has a much better algorithm for surfacing shows and tends actually to market the ones they want to be hits. Moreover, it's fairly clear that Netflix wants this new series to be a success, with an all-star cast, a first image blitz showcasing that all-star cast, and the Westerosi styling of the title to suggest an epic saga of intercine family warfare.

Part of the problem with doing a show on the Guinness family is a simple name issue. Nearly all of the firstborn men were named either Arthur or Benjamin, with occasional names like Williams and Edwards if there were enough sons. The original Arthur Guinness, who founded the brewery, was a Georgian-era figure who lived from 1725 to 1803. He and his wife, Olivia Whitmore, had ten children; their firstborn joined the clergy to escape his fate as a brewery owner, so the company passed to his second son... Arthur Guinness, who ran the company along with his siblings, Benjamin and William.

Styled as The Second Arthur Guinness or Arthur II Guinness (yes, really), Arthur and his wife, Anne Lee, only had one son, Benjamin Guinness. However, as an only child, he made up for it in spades. When Benjamin Lee Guinness took over the company in the 1850s, he did so with plans for global domination. He is the man credited with transforming the Guinness brewery into a worldwide powerhouse, setting their beer on the path to defining an entire country. He was knighted for his services to the United Kingdom and became a "new money" aristocrat in the Regency era.

Got all that? Good.

Because this show isn't about either of them.

House of Guinness is about the third generation of the Guinness family, the first to come along after the company had become a runaway success and made the family incredibly wealthy. Benjamin Lee had four children: firstborn Arthur (no, not Arthur III, instead he's defined by his title, 1st Baron Ardilaun), secondborn Benjamin (who was also Benjamin Lee, just to make everything more difficult and never made a barony to give him some differential), youngest son Edward (who eventually became 1st Earl of Iveagh) and daughter Anne, who went on to marry William Plunket, 4th Baron Plunket.

The series begins with the death of Benjamin Lee Guinness, whose shadow looms large over the choices his sons make as they struggle to take their family even further than their father before them and build on his legacy.

Here is the series logline:

House of Guinness explores an epic story inspired by one of Europe's most famous and enduring dynasties - the Guinness Family. Set in 19th-century Dublin and New York, the story begins immediately after the death of Sir Benjamin Guinness, the man responsible for the extraordinary success of the Guinness brewery, and the far-reaching impact of his will on the fate of his four adult children, Arthur, Edward, Anne, and Ben, as well as on a group of Dublin characters who work and interact with the phenomenon that is Guinness.

House of Guinness' sprawling ensemble is led by some of the hottest British talent currently found on TV. Anthony Boyle (Manhunt) will play the great-grandson of the original Arthur Guinness, also named Arthur, the firstborn of Sir Benjamin Guinness. Fionn O’Shea (Normal People) co-stars as the second son, the other Benjamin Lee Guinness; Louis Partridge (Enola Holmes) plays the youngest son, Edward Guinness; and Emily Fairn (The Responder) is Anne Lee Plunket (née Guinness), the only daughter of the family.

The rest of the ensemble is a who's who of British talent. It includes James Norton (Grantchester), Dervla Kirwan (Silent Witness), Jack Gleeson (Game of Thrones), Niamh McCormack (Everything Now), Danielle Galligan (Obituary), Ann Skelly (The Nevers), Seamus O’Hara (Blue Lights), Michael McElhatton (The Long Shadow), David Wilmot (Bodkin), Michael Colgan (Say Nothing), Jessica Reynolds (Kneecap), Hilda Fay (The Woman In The Wall), and Elizabeth Daulau (Andor).

Knight conceived of House of Guinness and penned all episodes; directors Tom Shankland (The Leopard) and Mounia Akl (Boiling Point) split helming duties with Howard Burch producing. Cahal Bannon is the series producer; Knight and Shankland executive produce alongside Karen Wilson, Elinor Day, Martin Haines, and Ivana Lowell.

House of Guinness debuts with all episodes on Netflix starting Thursday, September 25, 2025.