House of Guinness: Steven Knight crafts a dynastic drama for Netflix

Netflix's House of Guinness launches on Netflix on Thursday, a drama from Peaky Blinders creator Steven Knight that reimagines the Guinness dynasty at the moment of crisis — Sir Benjamin Guinness has died and his four children, each concealing dark secrets, are left to steer the brewery's fate.

Knight says when he looked into the real-life Guinness family, "it was immediate that I realised this is an incredible drama and story." He was struck by "the characters, events and how it all intermeshed with history and what was going on at the time." He notes that while the series is based on real events, it is a drama first and foremost, blending fact and fiction in equal measure. "It's often the true events that are the least believable," Knight says, underscoring his view that history and storytelling can coexist. "While the story is based on real events, it is a drama first."

Netflix Fionn O'Shea, Louis Partridge, Anthony Boyle and Emily Fairn play the four children of Sir Benjamin Guinness. One of the imagined figures in the series is Sean Rafferty, the brewery's foreman, played by Happy Valley star James Norton, whose fate becomes entangled with the dynasty's power struggles. Norton says his character is an "amalgamation of lots of different people" who existed at the time, and he found researching into the history "remarkable and fascinating." "I read the first four scripts all at once and it was a no-brainer," he says. "Almost every scene starts with Rafferty's silhouette in a window in a cloud of smoke and I thought 'sign me up, that's really cool'."

Most of the actors in the series were Irish, something Norton says added a level of pressure when it came to perfecting the accent and admits he was "so scared on the first day". Norton has previously starred in Happy Valley and is also currently appearing in historical drama King & Conqueror. "You work really hard at the beginning and once you crack the first big dialogue scene and have spoken the first lines there's no going back," he explains. The first scene Norton filmed was one where he punches three disloyal workers at the Guinness factory. He says he used the line 'I see your three names written in black ash up there' to get back into the accent for subsequent scenes.

Starring alongside Norton is Irish actress Danielle Galligan who plays Lady Olivia, an aristocrat who marries into the Guinness family. After the British monarch, she was the richest woman in Britain and Ireland at the time. The actress says she loved researching her character and understanding what she was really like. "She's such a firecracker in the series and then I actually found out she was also a very solitary and silent woman who painted lots of watercolours," Galligan explains. "She was a woman who had everything and yet was still looking for something. Learning about her gave me a sense of her lack of fulfilment and added another layer to her." Galligan says it was very special to tell an Irish story and "to do it on a global scale is a once-in-a-lifetime kind of experience." Joining Galligan is Niamh McCormack, whose character is part of the rebellious Fenian Brotherhood, and Jack Gleeson, best known for playing Joffrey Baratheon in Game of Thrones.

Gleeson took a break from acting after Game of Thrones but now stars as Byron Hedges in House of Guinness. McCormack and Gleeson say they are proud to be part of a series that puts Ireland on the map, but admit that with pride comes pressure over how it will be received by audiences at home. "It's always a factor but I tried not to think about it too much," Gleeson says. "You want things to be represented well but also hopefully people know not to take it too seriously as a historical document." Knight was less worried about what audiences would think, admitting: "I should care but I don't - if you worry what people are going to think you can't really do anything as you'd be trying to please too many different people."

House of Guinness has been compared to Succession, The Crown and Peaky Blinders, but Knight is indifferent about those comparisons. "People say every project is a cross between stuff and I don't take that too seriously, I'm confident that this is its own thing," he says. For Norton, being mentioned in the same breath as those dynasty dramas is a badge of honor. "To be in the same breath as those dynasty shows is great and I'm happy if we're included among that group," he says. Gleeson agrees and explains that the drama "takes the best bits of the rest and adds its own magic and essence." Knight does admit that there are many similarities between House of Guinness and Peaky Blinders and the shows have influenced each other as the 66-year-old has recently finished working on the Peaky Blinder film, The Immortal Man, which will see Cillian Murphy reprise his role as Tommy Shelby. "Sometimes parallels are pointed out that I don't even have a clue about," he laughs. "But there are a lot of similarities - the family, it has the same energy, humour and swagger."

Knight is also involved in writing the new James Bond film, which he previously told the BBC had always been on his bucket list. The movie will be directed by Dune's Denis Villeneuve and is currently in development and being overseen by Amazon MGM Studios after long-serving masterminds Barbara Broccoli and Michael G Wilson stood down in February. When asked a question about Bond, Knight smiles and says he's not able to talk about it but does admit that after the success of several of his shows, he feels a greater freedom to write more creatively. And with House of Guinness, he hopes to have used that freedom to make this latest dynasty saga a success in its own right.