Taking family power struggles and turning them into global television sensations is becoming something of a habit for screenwriter Steven Knight.
With Peaky Blinders, he took a Birmingham street gang and made them a cultural force. Now, Knight is betting on another dynasty, one rooted in brewing, wealth and legacy.
House of Guinness, which launches on Netflix on Thursday, tells the story of Ireland’s most famous family name at the moment of crisis – Sir Benjamin Guinness has died and his four children, each concealing dark secrets, are left to steer the brewery’s fate.
Knight says when he looked into the real-life Guinness family, “it was immediate that I realised this is an incredible drama and story”.
He was struck by “the characters, events and how it all intermeshed with history and what was going on at the time”.
While the story is based on real events, it is a drama first and foremost. Fact and fiction have been blended together, but Knight says he doesn’t see those two things as mutually exclusive, as “it’s often the true events that are the least believable”.
“Some of the historical events are so amazing and unexpected you wouldn’t make them up yourself,” he tells the BBC.