A pint of Guinness is a beautiful thing. That stripe of off-white head at the top of the glass giving way to the brooding black abyss of stout below. That contrast is part of what has made the drink iconic. And it’s a colour palette that has – quite naturally – inflected Steven Knight’s new drama, House of Guinness, about family wranglings within the Guinness clan. But where those tarry shades have become part of the drink’s mystique, has the television programme simply fallen foul of the modern trend for lighting shows with an unwatchably funereal gloominess?
From House of the Dragon to The Luminaries, The Handmaid’s Tale to Wolf Hall and Great Expectations (another Knight vehicle), accusations of excessive dreariness have dogged recent telly. Back in 2019, viewers tuned into a climactic episode of Game of Thrones’s final season – “The Long Night” – only to discover that the last battle for the living residents of Westeros would occur during the uncannily realistic nighttime. “This battle is fun but also totally visually incomprehensible,” one tweeter observed. “How do u switch this show from night mode?” another asked. As the show’s critical reputation degenerated in its twilight weeks, these issues felt symbolic.
