House of Guinness rewrites the rules for queer period drama with Arthur Guinness

But with all this extra responsibility also comes more scrutiny. Because, as it turns out, Arthur is gay at a time when being outed as such could risk life imprisonment – or worse. Not ideal when you're co-leading a business of considerable influence and wealth.

Forced to stay in Dublin, Arthur breaks up with his long-distance beau in London, but that doesn't stop him from having some fun still (that bathtub scene comes to mind).

Unfortunately, Arthur’s proclivities draw attention from local gangster Bonnie Champion, who demands £5,000 in blackmail money or else he'll be outed. An activist named Ellen Cochrane also sets out to blackmail Arthur, but instead of money, she wants his support in Dublin's Parliament for the Irish Brotherhood cause.

To draw attention away from his horny trysts and shenanigans, Arthur marries a rich socialite named Olivia. Both go into this arrangement fully understanding that there's no love in it, that they're just using each other to reap the benefits that such a union might bring them at this point in high society.

So far, so typical of queer representation in period dramas of this nature.

As is often the case, the queer character is forced into hiding who they are, usually to avoid ridicule or public shame. A "lavender marriage" such as this is often the only way to keep the hounds at bay and survive in a society that's not built for them.

Is it a realistic depiction of what it must have been like to be gay back then? For the most part, yes. But is it also sad and tragic in a way we've already seen told countless times before? Yes to that too.

Except, House of Guinness isn't so typical in this regard.

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With so much adversity to endure and face, it would have been easy to make Arthur wallow in the misery of it all and drink his pain away, hating himself for being born gay. It's certainly how society at the time would have wanted him to feel. But House of Guinness creator Steven Knight doesn't retread that well-worn path.

Instead, Arthur revels in the joy that being gay brings him. He's very active in his sex life, proudly so, and he does nothing to hide his sexuality from his family either.

Even the marriage he's been forced into becomes a surprise source of comfort as he and Olivia end up being quite happy together, despite the fact that their union is a sham. Arthur doesn't feel trapped by his wife because he's free to carry on meeting other men anyway.

Actor Anthony Boyle expanded on this with Town and Country where he celebrated the show's unique approach to Arthur's queerness:

"What Steven and Tom [Shankland], one of the directors, and I wanted to get across about Arthur was that he didn’t feel shame about his own sexuality. It’s that the world was wrong. We didn’t want him to be like, 'Oh god, I’m gay and I hate it.' He’s like, 'No, I’m f*****g gay and I love it. It’s you guys that are f****d up.'"

Being gay doesn't automatically make life harder for Arthur. It's being gay in a bigoted society that's the problem. And that viewpoint remains refreshing to see on TV, especially when it comes to period fare where guilt, shame, and misery are more often than not the default for gay characters like Guinness.

But even when queer representation does veer towards these tropes, there's still something to be said for it being included at all in period dramas like House of Guinness.

Given how rare it was for people to be out and proud in these earlier periods of history, it's easy for past eras to be straightwashed, thereby erasing the existence of queerness completely. As such, it's even more remarkable that House of Guinness is so progressive in that regard, especially when it remains unclear whether Arthur was even gay or not in real life.

Although there's little evidence to confirm his sexuality either way, academic author Joe Joyce suggested Arthur was "probably gay" in his 2009 book, The Guinnesses: The Untold Story of Ireland’s Most Successful Family. If so, his marriage to Lady Ardilaun was what we now consider to be a "lavender marriage," and this likely inspired Knight's take on Arthur in the show.

You could argue that portraying a real-life figure as gay when they might not have been is somewhat dubious. But then again, historical dramas take all sorts of liberties, and if rumours about Arthur's identity persist now still, all these years later, it seems that there might be at least some element of truth to them. Never mind all the countless people who were actually queer and have since been portrayed as straight in various retellings of their lives.

But regardless of all that, there's still power in the way House of Guinness portrays Arthur as a gay man in 19th-century Dublin of all places. Not just in the show's progressive, unique approach to that identity, but also that it even exists at all. Because queer people have always been here, and we always will be, no matter how much some might wish for the contrary.

House of Guinness is available to stream on Netflix. Sign up for Netflix from £5.99 a month. Netflix is also available on Sky Glass and Virgin Media Stream.

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