Is House of Guinness our next costume drama fix after The Gilded Age?

As we get ready to mourn the end of the genius Julian Fellows drama The Gilded Age (how good did it get!), we have Steven Knight, the creator of Peaky Blinders, to rely on as he turns his attention from industrial Birmingham to Victorian Dublin in a new drama about the family behind one of the world’s most famous beers.

House of Guinness, due to premiere on 25 September on Netflix, follows the rise of a young generation charged with running the Guinness brewery in the 1860s. The series centres on four siblings — Arthur, Edward, Anne and Ben — who inherit responsibility for an already successful business and must navigate the pressures of protecting and expanding a global brand.

‘Its the extraordinary story of a family who happens to be the inheritors of the biggest brewery in the world,’ Knight said in a recent interview. ‘They’re young and are given the task of taking on this incredibly successful brand. The first priority is: Don’t screw it up. And the second priority is to make Guinness even bigger.’

The series is being positioned as a historical family drama with elements of business intrigue and personal excess. Published promotional images show the siblings in moments of both ‘ecstatic highs and heartbreaking lows’, suggesting the narrative will mix intimate family conflict with the broader commercial and social challenges of running a major 19th‑century enterprise.

The Guinness name is synonymous with stout beer and industrial success, but the real family’s story also intersects with wider themes of empire, labour and urban change in Victorian Ireland and Britain. Drama set in this period often explores class tensions, the moral ambiguities of industrial capitalism, and the private lives of public figures — themes Knight previously mined in Peaky Blinders, albeit in a very different setting.

The series arrives at a time of renewed interest in origin stories of global brands and in fictionalised accounts of the wealthy families who shaped industrial Britain and Ireland. How faithfully the show will depict the historical Guinness family and the brewery’s business practices remains to be seen; promotional material focuses on dramatic stakes and character rather than strict historical biography. Oh and it stars James Norton [pictured], which is the clincher.