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.

The credit there obviously belongs in part to writer-creator Steven Knight, joined here by director Mouna Akl. She picks up where previous helmer Tom Shankman left off, emphasizing the contrast between the hellish hues of the brewery and the cold light of daytime Dublin and using long takes and tracking shots to sell the scale of the sets. Everyone feels like a cog in a constantly running machine. It’s her job to make sure the human moments stand out in all that industrial to-and-fro, and she does so admirably.

But the credit also belongs to actor Anthony Boyle, who — I swear I only realized this after I’d written out all three lines — delivers all of the delicious dialogue transcribed above. His Arthur Guinness feels like a fully formed human being, composed of many facets, all of which are reflected in each of his declarations and decisions. 

In Arthur Guinness, we have a basically morally decent hedonist, a closeted gay man, a politically ambitious Protestant Unionist Conservative, a man who loves his his siblings but finds them frustrating, a man condemned by his father to a job he doesn’t want, a man in an open marriage with a woman he dearly loves as a friend but has no interest in romantically or sexually and vice versa, a rich man selling products to and through poor and disreputable people on whom he is increasingly dependent. In many actors hands that would just be an unresolvable tangle of contradictions; Boyle makes it seem like Arthur has thought long and hard about all this and come out the man he is as a result. It’s more than acting, it’s co-writing, in a way, and it’s brilliant.

Anyway, love is very much in the air for Arthur and most of the other major characters in this episode, though we’ll save his story for last. It’s honestly Edward, the ostensibly responsible brother, who’s got the most interesting stuff going on in this department. Edward intervenes at his one-night-stand Ellen Cochrane’s behest when her brother Patrick is rounded up in citywide raids on the Irish Republican Brotherhood. Edward arranges is to Paddy will be sent to New York, where he’ll receive a hero’s welcome and a lucrative sinecure from the Guinnesses in exchange for his exile…and his continued support. 

Patrick doesn’t take well to the arrangement. All but spitting in the face of Byron Hedges and his Fenian contacts, he says he’d rather rot in jail than be in debt to those beer-brewing Protestants in the Guinness family. His sister Ellen’s sexual relationship with Edward, known now throughout the brotherhood — at least by those with Byron’s bankroll and connections — is another sore spot.

In the end, Byron wins Patrick over the Vito Corleone way. He puts a roll of cash and a loaded pistol on the table, and tells Patrick he’s welcome to accept either one or the other, but those are his only choices. That’s right: Byron’s not just a lovable scamp with the gift of gab, he’s a major player in the revolutionary underworld, and even a Fenian macher like Patrick Cochrane crosses him at his own peril.

Back home, though, Ellen isn’t as amenable to Edward’s overtures. Almost constitutionally incapable of dealing with the underclass without coming across like a condescending caricature — the spectacle he makes of himself attempting to dig graves in the impoverished village of Cloonboo on one of the family’s properties is grim comedy gold — he tells Ellen their experience was transformative for him. “I’m glad I could be of service,” she spits, and even then he’s unable to tell if she’s being sarcastic. 

But Edward’s persistent and sincere feelings for Ellen come up again in a very sophisticated way. Even as he’s falling in love with a Fenian, Edward is still courting his do-gooding spinster cousin Adelaide. (Dodo to her friends, like Edward’s bleeding-heart sister Anne.) This situation, Arthur is quite happy to point out, is downright Arthur-ian — typically he’s the brother who falls in inappropriate love. He’s also the brother whose marriage is predicated on absolute honesty, which is why it’s a shock to hear Edward straight-up come clean about having serious, life-changing feelings for another woman when he finally gets some time alone with Adelaie.

As the wise Mr. Potter — who’s the Fenian spy in the household, I’d bet a round of Guinness for the house on it — notes, Edward making it clear that he’s off the market, emotionally, is just the kind of thing that gets some women really interested. That certainly seems to be the case with Adelaide, who enjoys their simple dinner of potatoes in eel gravy together a lot more after learning he’s not a cold fish than she would have before. So what if his passion isn’t directed towards her at the moment? He’s proven capable of passion, and that’s a resource that can be redirected by the right person.

It can also be redirected by the wrong person. That would be Patrick — not Patrick Cochrane, Ellen’s brother, but the mononymed sex worker turned brewery worker whom Arthur has been seeing for some time. Patrick convinces Arthur that fewer people are upset by gay men than you’d think, and kisses him in the middle of the brewery to prove it. Given the total non-reaction in the bustling workplace, he may even be right. He thus persuades Arthur to invite him to a higher-society gathering for guys like them for the first time, where they can at last dance together in semi-public.

This is the lead Patrick’s been looking for, apparently. He reports back to Arthur’s reverend Uncle Henry, who initiates a police raid based on the tip. If Patrick doesn’t keep quiet about it, the good Rev. Gravatt will report him to the police instead. That’s the cliffhanger on which the episode ends.

And oh, Mr. Rafferty and Lady Olivia are banging on the regular, with Arthur’s approval and everyone else’s disapproval. “I have no intention of feeling anything for you, other than with my body,” Olivia assures her déclassé lover before throwing him out the window, somewhat literally. Oh yes, I’m quite sure, Olivia!

As I said above, House of Guinness is, perhaps, not as good as it could be. “As good as it could be” would be A Thousand Blows, Steven Knight’s other big lavish period piece this year, which looked stagier but felt more real thanks to the soulful performances of its mostly older cast. But there’s poetry in these pretty people, and at times it blossoms forth in full flower. Those times are worth the investment.

Sean T. Collins (@seantcollins.com on Bluesky and theseantcollins on Patreon) has written about television for The New York Times, Vulture, Rolling Stone, and elsewhere. He is the author of Pain Don’t Hurt: Meditations on Road House. He lives with his family on Long Island.