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Cheers: Danielle Galligan and Anthony Boyle in House of Guinness<\/p>\n
NETFLIX<\/p>\n
You might recognise a pattern here; his Peaky Blinders<\/a> did something very similar to the 1920s Midlands and became a global phenomenon. Consequently, Knight is one of the most f\u00eated, and busy, screenwriters right now. As well as House of Guinness there\u2019s a Peaky Blinders movie to finish and the screenplay for the next James Bond film, directed by Denis Villeneuve<\/a>, to write.<\/p>\n \u2022 Peaky Blinders creator to write new James Bond film<\/a><\/p>\n There\u2019s no sign of the pressure getting to him; the beard is clipped, his plaid shirt shows little sign of tummy bulge and I see no blue veins in the 66-year-old face. \u201cYou\u2019ll never catch me in a gym,\u201d he says when I ask how he keeps trim. \u201cI\u2019ve got a farm [in Gloucestershire], so I do a lot of walking and working with the animals.\u201d Farming is not a fitness formula that\u2019s worked for all television personalities. Knight orders tea with full fat milk; doesn\u2019t he worry about his heart? \u201cWorrying about your arteries is bad for your arteries.\u201d Which feels like a line he might give 007.<\/p>\n It hasn\u2019t all been unmitigated success. Serenity<\/a>, the 2019 thriller with Anne Hathaway and Matthew McConaughey, which Knight wrote and directed, was widely panned. \u201cI loved it, it\u2019s one of my favourite films that I\u2019ve done and it got terrible reviews,\u201d he says, still bemused. <\/p>\n There was also some criticism of This Town<\/a>, last year\u2019s BBC series set in the West Midlands of the early 1980s. Then it won three Royal Television Society awards. \u201cYou can\u2019t let bad reviews affect your work,\u201d he says. \u201cIt would be like trying to play the piano while thinking about every single finger that you\u2019re putting down.\u201d<\/p>\n Cillian Murphy and Charlotte Riley in Peaky Blinders<\/p>\n BBC\/ALAMY<\/p>\n Knight keeps the identity of his wife and seven children under wraps (he is also one of seven), but the Guinness family demands to be written about. Long mythologised, they are rumoured to have originated with Gaelic chiefdoms in medieval Ulster, or to have come to Ireland with Oliver Cromwell\u2019s invasion forces. Whatever the truth, they have been on the up for centuries. <\/p>\n \u201cThey\u2019ve always wanted to become aristocratic; at the same time, they are completely, in my opinion, aware of their own absurdity,\u201d he says. \u201cThey know how bonkers this all is.\u201d <\/p>\n The idea for House of Guinness came from Ivana Lowell, the 59-year-old scion of the brewing and banking clan, who saw Downton Abbey and reckoned her tumultuous family history could outdo it. Eventually Knight went to lunch with Lowell and was not a little enchanted by her ruffled aristocratic mien. <\/p>\n \u201cShe was sort of dotty; this \u2018of course, darling\u2019 stuff. She said, \u2018All my relatives live in these huge houses, freezing cold, there\u2019s no food in the house, there\u2019s booze. Louis Theroux and his wife came to stay and after two days they went to the orchard to get some apples because no one had fed them.\u2019 But they\u2019d been offered champagne and gin.\u201d<\/p>\n Lowell deserves her own Netflix drama. Sexually abused as a six-year-old, she suffered life-threatening burns after accidentally pulling a kettle of boiling water down on herself, and lost her 18-year-old sister, Natalya, to a heroin overdose. As does Lowell\u2019s mother, the alcoholic author and artist\u2019s muse Lady Caroline Blackwood, who scandalised society by her first marriage to the Jewish painter Lucian Freud. Or perhaps Lowell\u2019s grandmother, Maureen, one of the \u201cGlorious Guinness girls\u201d of the 1920s, who wore a penis mask to parties and had a maid warm up the lavatory seat before she sat down. <\/p>\n Instead, House of Guinness begins in 1868 with the death of Sir Benjamin Guinness, the head of what was then the biggest brewery in the world, founded in 1759 by his grandfather Arthur Guinness. Which of his four adult offspring will benefit from the will? <\/p>\n \u2022 The heart of darkness inside the House of Guinness<\/a><\/p>\n The eldest son Arthur (Anthony Boyle) is keen to escape the responsibilities of business and enjoy his secret gay life. His brother Edward (Louis Partridge<\/a>) longs to run Guinness himself and conquer the American beer market. Anne (Emily Fairn<\/a>) is hoping to inherit anything that will deliver her from a stifling marriage to a ghastly clergyman, and the alcoholic youngest son Ben (Fionn O\u2019Shea) mainly wants another drink. <\/p>\n Although the drama draws on the republican struggle to cast off British rule and the terrible effects of the Irish famine this, essentially, is Succession with stout. Not that Knight would know about that. \u201cMake a list of all the big TV shows and films,\u201d he says, \u201cand I won\u2019t have seen any.\u201d Why won\u2019t he watch? \u201cBecause if it\u2019s good I think, \u2018Oh, why can\u2019t I do this?\u2019 And if it\u2019s bad, well, what\u2019s the point?\u201d <\/p>\n The House of Guinness tells the story of four heirs, one brewery and a battle for a family empire<\/p>\n NETFLIX<\/p>\n Happily, he does watch his own shows. The actors playing the siblings are pretty sensational and there are standout turns from Dervla Kirwan<\/a> as a scheming aunt and James Norton<\/a> as Sean Rafferty, the ultra-violent Guinness family enforcer who cudgels his way through Victorian Dublin (convincingly represented by Liverpool), cracking skulls and smashing jaws. <\/p>\n![\"Cillian](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-content\/uploads\/2025\/09\/\/03803bbe-9a1e-4f95-b780-d546a4294205.jpg\")
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