During the Irish Civil War the counter-revolutionary Free State forces, which had been led by Michael Collins and were later commanded by future fascist Richard Mulcahy, tied nine Republican prisoners to a landmine and detonated it. Obliging them to watch all the episodes of House of Guinness would have been crueller.

James Connolly was tied to a chair severely wounded and barely conscious when the British executed him. That was an act of kindness compared to making someone endure House of Guinness. It is beyond awful and can only be watched in segments of no more than ten minutes by any unrestrained, sentient human.

I’m still debating whether it can accurately be described as racist swill. Certainly, the caricatures of the Fenians, a name worn with pride in much of Belfast, is an admixture of 19^th century Punch cartoons and an episode of The Simpsons in which leprechauns start fighting on St Patrick’s Day.  The opening few minutes of the first episode is virtually a direct ripoff, perhaps with a nod to the battle sequence in Gangs of New York.

In reality, the Fenians were a nationalist organisation which arguably could trace a lineage to Babeuf’s Conspiracy of Equals. To be fair, they did have some harebrained schemes such as trying to invade Canada in 1866 for reasons that may or may not have made sense at the time. Rather more impressively, they rescued six of their comrades from an Australian prison and got them to the safety of America on a whaling ship. Now, there is a subject for a series.

You could maybe just about put up with the historical illiteracy and pure made up bollocks if the rest of the thing had any merit. Dublin is recreated as the sort of sterile, comic book wasteland that CGI delivers. The characters are all portrayed as a 21^st century version of how people in the 19^th century should have been an it is really hard to give a tuppenny foc (as the Anglo-Saxon word is rendered in the Irish subtitles) about them. Benjamin has a gambling and drink problem. Arthur’s gay relationship which is the hook on which most of the futile plot is based because the Fenians will use it as proof that they are part of “a degenerate, Protestant ruling class”. Sister Anne does a lot of conniving. In fairness, she does do that Victorian lady thing of fainting on one occasion. They say things like “did you not learn about love in London?”. The dialogue really is that bad.

It is just a bunch of the richest people in Europe squabbling amongst themselves and is beyond tedious. It took me the fortitude of O’Donovan Rossa in an English prison not to use the fast forward button more than once per episode.

Now, as a Belfast native I am willing to believe all sorts of things about lazy, feckless, drunken Dubliners but even Ian Paisley would have raised an eyebrow at how the city’s Papist working class was portrayed. They can’t all have been villainous, alcoholic, snivelling morons. Can they? Are they? It isn’t a place I know that well.

Does the bloody thing have any redeeming features?

Kneecap are getting some royalties from the soundtrack and the Irish subtitles are helpful for anyone brushing up on the language. My profound hope is that the translators were just handed a script and didn’t have to watch it. If so, perhaps a few streets could be named after them in honour of their sacrifice. Catherine Connolly should put that in her manifesto for the presidential election.  

Imperialism has been cruel to Ireland over the centuries. The House of Guinness suggests it isn’t going to stop anytime soon.