I firmly believe House of Guinness is the perfect replacement for this Netflix drama (& it’s not Peaky Blinders or The Crown)

As a seasoned Peaky Blinders fan and an admirer of Steven Knight's work, I was eager to tune into Netflix's latest historical series House of Guinness. Trading the sooty Birmingham alleys of the 1920s, Knight instead pivots to a famous family dynasty in 1868 Ireland. The trailer and Knight's attachment to this project had me believe that the series would be rife with similar stylistic themes to those of his critically acclaimed gangster saga from 2013 or another popular historical series on Netflix, titled The Crown.

However, a quick binge session revealed that House of Guinness is the perfect replacement for Mike Flanagan's closing chapter from his Poe-inspired universe on Netflix, The Fall of the House of Usher. Seasoned horror and Flanagan fans might find this opinion strange, but beneath the literal ghosts in this 2023 supernatural Gothic miniseries is a story about a dysfunctional family dynasty like the Guinnesses.

The Fall of the House of Usher is a masterpiece in Gothic horror, inspired by Edgar Allan Poe's 1840 eponymous short story and many of his other works. While the show's fans might not find sinister ravens or spooky cats in Knight's latest, they will find a similar family saga of deceit and legacy in House in Guinness.

More on this in our story.

House in Guinness is a family saga like The Fall of the House of Usher

While critics are calling Steven Knight's latest historical series the perfect Peaky Blinders and Succession replacement, I found it quite similar to Flanagan's The Fall of the House of Usher. The sins of the father are revisited and haunt (quite literally in the 2023 series) their respective children in both shows.

House of Guinness is centred around the Guinness family, the largest stout manufacturer in the world. After Sir Benjamin Lee's death, the responsibility of his family brewery falls onto the shoulders of his four children. Like The Fall of the House of Usher, the latest historical series explores the themes of legacy and heritage and asks this important question: Can the future generation escape the sins of their father? Amidst a period of political unrest in Ireland in 1868, the Guinness siblings have the ultimate choice to either redeem their family or repeat their ancestors' evils once again.

Knight's series trades Flanagan's supernatural curses and spectral shadows with a nuanced historical setting, blending political, social and religious themes with the Guinness' personal history, which is further fictionalized for the small screen.

House of Guinness: Literal ghosts vs the haunting nature of legacy

Stylistically, House of Guinness mirrors what audiences loved about Usher, the grandeur of family drama and the symbolic crumbling of dynasties. But where Flanagan’s work leaned into gothic excess, Guinness thrives on authenticity. It blends period-piece aesthetics with the kind of psychological intensity that feels timeless.

The dark and intoxicating black liquid that runs deep into Knight's narrative almost runs parallel with the Guinness family scandals and rivalries. While Flanagan's Usher saga pivoted into the supernatural and explored the titular family's dysfunction through literal ghosts, Knight does it with the haunting nature of legacy. The future of the family brewery and each sibling's ambitions are ruled by the weight of this legacy, which comes haunting for them like the Usher siblings.

Since history favoured the Guinnesses, House of Guinness Season 1 ends on an optimistic note for all the siblings, who find their future callings in business, politics and philanthropy. While they might face a tragedy in the form of the season's cliffhanger (Arthur's assassination attempt), history can testify that Guinnesses remained on the winning side.

However, the same cannot be said about their cursed counterparts, as the Usher family saga concluded with the literal destruction of the titular family (as hinted in the title itself).

While House of Guinness is no imitation of The Fall of the House of Usher, it continues the similar saga of a decaying family empire and morally corrupt characters, who eventually cope with their losses, as opposed to the Ushers.

House of Guinness is streaming on Netflix.

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