What kind of man is Sir Arthur Guinness? That’s the question being put before the people of Dublin in this eighth and final installment of House of Guinness’ first season. (After that cliffhanger, it had better be only the first season.) Is he the great conciliator between Republican and Unionist, determined to save lives through his family’s charitable work regardless of denomination, or is he a Conservative wolf in sheep’s clothing? Is he the scandal-plagued politician who barely escaped jail after attempt to fix his last run for office, and around whom rumors no doubt swirl regarding his nocturnal activities? Is he the secret funder of Fenians at home and abroad? Is he a peddler of damnation in a bottle? Does he just make a really good beer?

But thanks to the work of actor Anthony Boyle, who is mesmerizing in the role, “What kind of man is Sir Arthur Guinness?” is one of the most interesting questions on television this year. 

I reviewed the season finale of House of Guinness for Decider.

House of Guinness is a show on which Jack “King Joffrey” Gleeson makes his triumphant return to Ireland in a fur coat and bowler hat, riding triumphantly down the Liffey in a rowboat accompanied by a swan, while Kneecap plays. There, I’ve done my part. That sentence right there either sells you on this show, or it doesn’t. 

I reviewed the penultimate episode of House of Guinness for Decider.

House of Guinness is the damnedest show. There are times when the ultra-moderne needledrops, the surfeit of straightforwardly attractive young people in the cast, and the reliance on upstairs/downstairs across-the-tracks attraction for the soapy stuff makes it all feel a bit old-school CW Network. It’s like The Vampire Diaries if they all drank stout instead of blood. 

Then along will come a line of dialogue like this:

“Out there in the darkness beyond the baronial halls there is laughter all night long, and those birds always sing too soon.”

Or this:

“To see you love inappropriately…it’s like opening a window for fresh air!”

Or this:

“You can wear your Sunday suit, but there will be no hymns, no prayers.”

And suddenly you’re not watching Gossip Cailín, you’re watching Deadwood: Dublin. You’re watching Boardwalk Republic. You’re watching a period piece with something to say, and the skill to say it well.

I reviewed the sixth episode of House of Guinness for Decider.

I look forward to a lot about this show. Some of its most satisfying moments, like Ellen’s hookup with Edward, feel so inevitable you can see them coming several episodes away. Others, like the very real question of whether or not Lady Christine was going to kill herself or Aunt Agnes, you don’t know how they’ll go until they’ve gone. (Having the gun go off accidentally was a really deft touch.)

And you just never know when someone’s going to drop everything and start profanely paraphrasing Shakespeare. “I could be bounded in a nutshell,” Arthur tells his father Sir Benjamin’s portrait, “and still count myself the king of infinite space, were it not that I had these bad fucking dreams, Father.” Friends, have you ever felt yourself on the cusp of happiness, only to have yourself held back by forces completely beyond your control? If so, Arthur Guinness is singing your song.

I reviewed the fifth episode of House of Guinness for Decider.

Let’s hear it for Jack Gleeson. The Irish actor cemented his place in television history in his first major role: the smug, sadistic, sociopathic, cowardly, completely insufferable boy king Joffrey Baratheon on Game of Thrones. He returned to his studies after that, acting only sporadically until very recently. 

God, am I glad to see him back. His character here, the archetypal Irish trickster Byron Hedges, makes use of many of the same traits that made Gleeson’s portrayal of Joffrey so menacing — the twinkle of glee in his eye, the tight-lipped smile of someone harboring a secret — but harnesses them for good instead of evil. Well, if not good, then at least Guinness.

I reviewed the fourth episode of House of Guinness for Decider.

I can’t say that House of Guinness is firing on all cylinders. Ellen, for example, feels altogether too broad a caricature of a fiery Fenian redhead, down to chugging a pint o’  Guinness with her flaming tresses curling hither thither and yon. I could do with Rafferty getting a little more seasoning than “sexy swaggering tough-guy company man, too; his scene with Ellen suffers as a result of neither quite feeling like people the way Arthur or Anne or even the type-A Edward do.

I think it’s Arthur’s show, frankly. It’s like the man’s callowness — “What the fuck do I care about the people for? I’m a Conservative!” he says at one point, indignant — is in a constant tug of war with actor Anthony Boyle’s soulfulness, with neither side emerging the victor in full. (Also, you see his penis.) That said, Jack Gleeson stole every scene he was in as Joffrey, and he’s already a blast as Byron, so there are other contenders for the crown. Or the harp.

I reviewed the third episode of House of Guinness for Decider.

It’s the damnedest thing. I’m sitting here watching the second episode of House of Guinness and thinking “Huh, this seems much stronger to me than the first episode, somehow. Less showy and blunt, more thoughtful, better dialogue, better lighting, an altogether tighter thing.” Great news, right? But then I thought, “Wait, why does this seem familiar?” It’s because the exact same thing happened with writer-creator Steven Knight’s last period piece about 19th-century dirty deeds among people with pretty accents, A Thousand Blows. 

Back then, I wrote that “Series premieres, even of very good shows, often suffer from what I call ‘pilot-itis.’ It’s a tendency to go a bit big and braod in hopes of catching and capturing the audience’s attention.” That’s especially true of the House of Guinness debut, which introduced the players and their personalities and motivations with all the subtlety of a kid plopping her favorite action figures down on the floor before playing with them. 

It’s the playing that seems to interest Knight more than the setting-up. All of a sudden he’s having Aunt Agnes lament to her headstrong niece, who neither wants to play matchmaker for her brothers nor be married herself, “Oh, Anne, you’re a wave crashing against a rock, made up of gold bands and diamond engagement rings.” You’ve got Arthur, who earlier that day was dumped by his boyfriend Michael (Foundation‘s Cassian Bilton) in a botanical garden, cryptically telling his brother and their body man Rafferty “My peace was shattered today, beside a water lily.” 

In the first episode, only Ben the junkie and Rafferty the rake were permitted this kind of lyricism, and coming from them it seemed more like a character defect than anything else. Once everyone gets in on the act, you start achieving some of that Deadwood magic, where characters of low character speak in high poetry.

I reviewed the second episode of House of Guinness for Decider.

WATER. MALTED BARLEY. HOPS. YEAST. COPPER. OAK. FIRE. FAMILY. MONEY. REBELLION. POWER.

According to the titles that spool out over a music video–style montage showing the making of the legendary brew, these are the ingredients that go into both a pint of Guinness and House of Guinness itself. The approach to getting this information across is stylish, slick, bombastic, and direct. The text is a blend of cold hard facts and poetic embellishment. It’s a bit corny in places, but knowingly so: People who play with themes like “FAMILY. MONEY. REBELLION. POWER” know they’re walking well-trod territory, so they might as well dance their way across it instead.

That seems to be the approach of writer-creator Steven Knight, previously responsible for the well-regarded British gangster period piece Peaky Blinders, as well as the excellent 19th-century bareknuckle-boxing drama A Thousand Blows earlier this year. This seems an altogether less serious, more scandalous and sudsy effort than ATB, which was anchored in part by powerhouse performances from future Adolescence stars Stephen Graham and Erin Doherty. There’s only so silly you can get when those two are giving their all.

This is not to sell short any of the talents involved in House of Guinness, which is prefaced with the amusingly Wildean description “THIS FICTION IS INSPIRED BY TRUE STORIES.” This is is the historical-fiction TV-show equivalent of David Bowie slapping every copy of The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars with the phrase TO BE PLAYED AT MAXIMUM VOLUME — a sign that above all, we’re here to jam out and have fun.

I reviewed the premiere of House of Guinness for Decider, where I’ll be covering the whole season in the next few days.