A descendant of the prosperous family depicted in Netflix’s new drama House of Guinness has said the depiction of her relatives is “very unfair” and left her “in a righteous fury”.
The series, written by Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight, follows the four children of Sir Benjamin Guinness as they hustle to maintain the success of the family’s iconic brewery after his death.
Molly Guinness, a radio producer and great-great-great-granddaughter of Sir Benjamin, complained all the show’s characters are “straight from a bingo card of modern chilchés about rich people.”
The 38-year-old said she watched the first two episodes of the series with her cousin Sachin and “hooted with laughter” at the inaccurate depiction of her family history.
“The more I watched the more indignant I became,” Molly wrote in The Times, adding it was “unjust” to turn her great-great-grandfather Edward (Louis Partridge) and his brother Arthur (Anthony Boyle) into “fools”.
Molly also voiced concerns that Sir Benjamin had been portrayed by Knight as a “distant and overbearing father who callously cut two of his children out of his will” when he was, in fact, “a loving father”.
But the 38-year-old was most disturbed by the depiction of her ancestor’s charity work, which “is filmed through a lens of shame or self-preservation” rather depicted as sincere philanthropy.
She wrote: “The thing is we do all feel proud of the delicious beer, the funny advertisements and high-quality merchandise, but what we feel even prouder of is the Guinness Trust houses and the idea that as more and more pints were sold round the world, our ancestors noticed what needed to be done… and wrote out cheques.”
Molly said her family had given a quarter of a million toward research into infectious diseases, their Hampstead home, Kenwood House, became an English Heritage site, and “about a million” was given to housing trusts across London and Dublin.
The 38-year-old concluded: “So I confess I did have an episode of righteous fury, but…The prospect of the laughter of all my brothers and cousins once they get their hands on it is a real joy.”
In The Independent’s two-starHouse of Guinness review, Katie Rosseinsky dubbed the series “a bit exhausting” and “a bit try-hard”. She wrote: “It seems unlikely that viewers will stick around for last orders.”
