When Peaky Blinders ended in 2022, I did not immediately go looking for a replacement because I knew nothing would come close. Steven Knight had built six seasons’ worth of something that operated on its own frequency entirely. Peaky Blinders is a crime drama by genre, family tragedy by instinct, with a Birmingham that feels invented and true at the same time. The Netflix movie that arrived in March gave Cillian Murphy one more outing as Tommy Shelby, and it was worth watching, but a movie is a movie.
A series is a place you actually inhabit, and I had been waiting for Knight to craft another one. He finally has, and its future is looking bright. House of Guinness debuted on Netflix in September 2025, and within days, people were reaching for exactly the comparisons I expected. It pulled 17 million views in its opening weeks, was subjected to Netflix’s usual silence about its future, and was confirmed for a second season recently. If you have been waiting for a reason to start watching it, let the renewal be it.
‘House of Guinness’ Is the Most Ambitious Period Drama Netflix Has Made in Years
House of Guinness begins in 1860s Dublin, in the immediate aftermath of Sir Benjamin Guinness’ death. His will cleaves his four children apart rather than drawing them together, and what follows is a study in how inheritance corrodes people who were already not entirely well. Arthur (Anthony Boyle), the eldest and most volatile, keeps tipping into something darker; Edward (Louis Partridge) is ruthless; Anne and Ben (Emily Fairn and Fionn O’Shea) fill out the family portrait in the most suspicious ways.
The Succession comparison gets thrown around a lot, which is understandable, but it only goes so far. Succession was a comedy at its core. A show about grotesque people failing in a world where the consequences were largely abstract. House of Guinness puts its characters inside actual Irish history. Elements like labor tensions of the industrial era, the friction of a Protestant dynasty operating inside a Catholic city, and the slow accumulation of political grievance that defined Dublin in the 1860s make up a compelling backdrop. Knights’ Guinnesses behave badly and often viciously, but their cruelty always has a material context because the world is always pressing back.
James Norton’s Patrick Cochrane, a political antagonist whose rivalry with Arthur deepens through Season 1 into something threatening, gave me the best TV performance I watched last fall. Norton has played roles that flatten him, and Knight wrote Cochrane as a character who demands everything Norton has. Season 1 ends with Cochrane firing a shot at Arthur during a crowded electoral rally before cutting to black. It’s not an extraordinary final moment, but it sets really high expectations for Season 2.
Netflix Almost Canceled ‘House of Guinness’
Production on Season 2 starts in January 2027, scheduled to begin once Knight has finished writing the new James Bond movie for Amazon. The man is running several of the most anticipated projects across television and movies, making it all the more impressive that House of Guinness secured another run.
What’s on Netflix flagged in October 2025 that the show’s future was in doubt, which, if you ask me, is not entirely shocking. Netflix has a well-documented tendency to cancel expensive period dramas that do not deliver Bridgerton numbers out of the gate, and House of Guinness is not that show. It is slower, denser, and more interested in historical texture than romantic momentum. The fact that it survived anyway suggests Netflix made a judgment call about longevity rather than immediate performance.
Knight told the Irish Mirror shortly after the show premiered that he was already thinking about “Seasons two and three and four” and a Peaky Blinders-scale expansion of the Guinness world. One more season does not secure that vision, but it opens the door. Given where Season 1 left Arthur’s story, that door cannot open soon enough.
House of Guinness Season 1 is on Netflix now.
- Release Date
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September 25, 2025
- Network
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Netflix
This story originally appeared on Movieweb
