Is ‘House of Guinness’ based on a true story? What’s real and what’s fictional in the Netflix show.

Netflix’s House of Guinness brings viewers to 1860s Dublin to follow siblings Arthur, Edward, Anne and Benjamin in the aftermath of the death of their father, Benjamin Guinness, the grandson of the founder of the Guinness brewery.

The eight-part miniseries was released on Sept. 25 and was created by Steven Knight, who was behind the highly acclaimed British historical drama Peaky Blinders, and Guinness heiress Ivana Lowell.

Lowell was watching Downton Abbey nearly a decade ago when she had the thought, “Our family history was a lot juicier and more interesting than this — plus it was all true,” she told the BBC. That’s why she decided to write a proposal for a TV show based on her family, which landed on Knight’s desk six years later.

While a second season hasn’t been confirmed yet, Knight said he would love to continue building the show around the family.

“In a perfect world, I’d like to take it all the way into the 20th century,” he told ScreenRant. “If you look at even a cursory glance at the history of the Guinness family, they keep throwing up these dramas. They keep making these mistakes. They keep doing these wonderful things.”

House of Guinness isn’t a documentary, but it doesn’t stray too far from its roots. We take a look at what’s true and what’s fictional in the new Netflix series.

Is ‘House of Guinness’ based on a true story?

Overall, the show, which focuses on the Guinness siblings in the aftermath of their father’s death, is rooted in history since Knight was inspired by Lowell’s stories.

“Ivana is an absolute mine of information and untold stories about the family going back years,” Knight wrote in the show’s press, according to the BBC. “Meeting her was the best bit of research imaginable because you didn’t just get the stories, you got the [family] confidence, and the spirit and the slight madness.”

The plot blends historical fact with fictionalized drama to enhance its watchability. As Knight told Netflix’s Tudum, Lowell’s stories served as “stepping stones” to “fill in the gaps” of the plot.

The main characters are based on real people

The main cast of the Guinness siblings is based on the actual family members in the aftermath of Benjamin Guinness’s death in May 1868. The four children, named Arthur (Anthony Boyle), Edward (Louis Partridge), Anne Plunket (Emily Fairn) and Benjamin (Fionn O’Shea), all existed.

A lot of what the characters pursue and accomplish in the series is historically accurate too, according to the Irish Emigration Museum. Arthur and Edward were given joint control over the Guinness brewery in their father’s will; Anne was not left any ownership of the brewery, but she was financially “provided for through her dowry”; and the youngest brother, Benjamin, did inherit fewer shares of the brewery compared with his older brothers, but it’s not clear why.

Political and religious tensions were high in Dublin at the time

Political tensions are a major plot point throughout the series, reflecting the situation in Ireland at the time. The Fenian Brotherhood and the Irish Republican Brotherhood were real nationalist groups advocating for an independent Ireland, which was still part of Britain at the time.

Religion was also a big source of strain throughout the country since more Irish people wanted to identify as Catholic as a way to defy the association with Britain and fight for independence. A lot of the Anglican-identifying people in Ireland were rich, including the real Guinness family, who identified as Anglo-Irish Protestants.

Although there is no evidence that the Guinness family was specifically targeted by these groups, the negative economic effects caused by the Irish famine in the 1840s were still a major problem, the Irish Emigration Museum reported.

Fictional characters and storylines help move the plot forward

While the Guinnesses were real people, Knight said he needed to introduce some fictional characters to help explain certain plot points and motivations.

“These people are real people. The events, the main events, the major events that are documented are real,” Knight told Radio Times. “The in between… it’s very difficult to get opinion or nuance in terms of the character. So those are the things that you have to, as a dramatist, you have to create and create who the characters are, why they made those decisions.”

Knight added several fictional characters outside the immediate family, including Sean Rafferty (James Norton), Byron Hedges (Jack Gleeson) and the Fenian leaders, Patrick (Seamus O’Hara) and Ellen Cochrane (Niamh McCormack).

In addition to the fictional characters, House of Guinness includes several plot points that are not historically accurate.

For example, at the beginning, the elder Benjamin’s will is said to have declared that if Arthur or Edward refused to run the brewery, then neither of them would get their inheritance. This did not actually happen — the will said the brothers had the option to buy each other out of the business if one of them did not want to help run the brewery.

Edward was also not the reason Guinness came to the U.S. The beer was first exported to South Carolina — not New York — in October 1817, which was 30 years before Edward was born. And while Arthur did receive a public death threat as his character does in the show’s finale, it was not during his second Parliament campaign. It was two years before, in 1872, after Arthur had issued a correction to an editor in the Freeman’s Journal.