'House of Guinness' review: Irish family drama is entertaining, but hollow

WHAT IT'S ABOUT The story of the Guinness family during a period of transition for their eponymous brewing company arrives as an eight-part series on Netflix from the "Peaky Blinders" creator Steven Knight. 

It's 1868 in Dublin, with tensions high between the unionists committed to Ireland remaining a part of the United Kingdom and the Irish Republican Fenians rebelling against British rule.

The show begins with the death of patriarch Sir Benjamin Guinness. The father of four adult children, he leaves the business to sons Arthur (Anthony Boyle, who played John Wilkes Booth in  "Manhunt") and Edward (Louis Partridge, Sid Vicious in 2022's "Pistol"), with daughter Anne (Emily Fairn) and the other son, also named Benjamin (Fionn O'Shea), left behind.

The fictionalized "House of Guinness" observes the fallout as the children navigate this new reality.

MY SAY The creator has a shrewd vision for this story, with its Celtic punk-infused soundtrack and its rapid pacing; its scenes of dramatic confrontations set in public squares and in dark, impressionistically lit alleyways.

It has an abundance of style and it's been made with flair. Almost every shot looks great.

Knight and his team have condensed a complex period of Irish history into an easily digestible form. The tensions and conflicts are clear, as is the way in which the story of the Guinness family at this particular moment comes to serve as a symbol of the evolving Irish aristocracy writ large.

Like so many other contemporarily made period pieces — think "Bridgerton" and the like — "House of Guinness" goes to great lengths to be hip, and modern, and of the moment, and to do everything possible to avoid seeming musty or dry or otherwise dated. 

Anything that might not fit that vision gets shortchanged.

So a screening of the first three episodes reveals little insight into the challenges of running a brewery at this fraught moment. The family's vocation could be essentially anything and the show would be virtually unchanged. There's a promise of further exploration as the story looks toward Guinness arriving in the United States, among other plot lines, but they've barely begun to be developed three episodes in.

The more basic problem lies with the characters themselves, who barely have distinguishable personalities.

We can identify the siblings based on their singular traits: Arthur's the proper, refined brother with a secret; Edward is the scheming businessman; Anne has a soft heart for the poor; and Benjamin is the troubled one.

Things aren't much different when it comes to the supporting parts, including the Irish Republican leader Ellen Cochrane (Niamh McCormack) and the Guinness family enforcer Sean Rafferty (James Norton).

There's nothing interesting or complicated about them, and the relentless focus on keeping things moving from one plot point to the next ensures that the characters don't have any of the quiet moments that actors generally need to make us feel something.

BOTTOM LINE "House of Guinness" is always entertaining, but there's a hollowness to it that's hard to shake.