Heard the latest trend at the water cooler?. It’s not, have you seen House of Guinness (2025) / Monster (2025) / Black Rabbit (2025) / Frauds (2025)? But when did you stop watching House of Guinness / Monster / Black Rabbit / Frauds? When streamers show such contempt for audiences is it any wonder the audiences retaliate with the only weapon in their arsenal – switching off?
It’s not as if House of Guinness is treading a fine line between Downton Abbey and Succession. Any fine line is purely in the imagination of the makers of the Irish saga. There’s no fine line to be found. Downton Abbey is a traditional historical drama focusing on characters and relationships with an occasional nod to the outside world, Succession is a ramped-up business drama focusing on vicious characters and bitter relationships on which the outside world rarely intrudes. There’s no hybrid possible. You just can’t merge them.
Am I going to keep watching House of Guinness because some critic says it picks up in the third episode? It’s not a historical tale in the grand tradition of country houses, quarrels and bonking, but actually some post-modernist number where characters do what, historically, they otherwise wouldn’t. The women wouldn’t swear in company, didn’t even attend funerals in those days and the Dublin populace did not bombard the funeral carriage of the most distinguished person in the country with tomatoes not even when rallied by rebellious forces.
The Crown began this ridiculous idea that you just fictionalize the factual because you can. The resultant controversy is good for column inches and clickbait but nothing else. I stopped watching that after the second series.
There has to be enough in the Ed Gein story without a mother straight out of Carrie (1976) and a bad guy with a squeaky accent majoring on Ilsa, She-Wolf of the S.S. I gave up on Monster and House of Guinness after one episode. I didn’t get past two episodes of Black Rabbit, wondering why it required more episodes before these ineptly-drawn characters got their comeuppance.
But Frauds takes the biscuit. This only works if you fall for the idea that security cameras never work in Spain and that a criminal who has been locked up for a decade and must be way behind in her knowledge of such can still tell at a glance whether they are working or not. And that the Spanish are so hard-up that they can only manage a padlock to deter thieves from a bullring. Or that the most famous bullfighter’s outfit in the history of bullfighting will equally be bereft of even the simplest of security measures that a thief can walk off with it undisturbed.
Laughable is the tone set here early on. Stands to reason that if you can smuggle a gun into prison you can smuggle a gun out and that if you can have sex with male wardens you will have everyone in the palm of your hand especially if you plan to steal a major piece of art. Try getting your head round the notion that the prison authorities would hand over on compassionate grounds an inmate dying of cancer to her best pal who hasn’t visited her once while she’s been inside. It wouldn’t surprise me if the cancer is faked, if you can smuggle in a gun etc then surely you can bribe a doctor or two.
Frauds aims at Thelma and Louise country and fails. Hubris is the major flaw in House of Guinness, Black Rabbit and Monster, the idea that showrunners know best and that studio executives had better give them their head otherwise they’ll slope off to another studio which will accede to their demands.
But then studio heads appear to have little idea of what will attract an audience. There’s nothing new in that, otherwise Hollywood wouldn’t be littered with a back catalog of flops and stinkers. What happened to audience research that The Smashing Machine (2025) was expecting an opening weekend of $15 million only to come up $9 million short and my guess is that they took the Oscar promotional route because the movie was such a mess there was little choice.
Television studios can spend millions pumping up a new release so that it gains some initial audience traction but underestimate the audience and your viewing figures will tumble.
The Magnificent 60s 