Tom Shankland takes character seriously in material that could easily settle for violence or spectacle. We like the energy and performances of House of Guinness, though its uneven pacing makes our recommendation a qualified one.
Fi1m perspective
The Guinness family schemes, and the cast makes the scheming worth following. That is what works in House of Guinness (2025), for which Shankland directed the first five episodes. We enjoyed watching these people manoeuvre around one another, because the performances kept us interested even when the pacing faltered. The period spectacle has energy, but the actors are the stronger reason to keep watching. It is a good fit for a director whose working priorities include collaboration with performers and attention to character in heightened material.
His feature debut, WΔZ (2007), put questions about love and survival inside a crime thriller. He then wrote and directed The Children (2008), a horror film about children turning violent. Those subjects give some sense of why his interest in emotional detail matters: without it, such material could become a succession of unpleasant incidents. From 2011, television became his main field, and he directed all eight episodes of The Missing (2014). That move gave him longer stories to handle, with the demands of sustaining a mystery across several hours.
His handling of period ensembles also runs through Les Misérables (2018), the six-part adaptation of Victor Hugo's novel. In House of Guinness, Shankland works with writer and creator Steven Knight, which matters when judging whose contribution we are seeing. We should be wary of giving a director sole credit for everything that works in a series. Still, the strength of the performances is consistent with Shankland's emphasis on working closely with actors, and suggests that his priorities are useful ones.
Our reservation about House of Guinness is substantial enough to keep that praise measured. Uneven pacing matters when following the family's scheming is the chief pleasure, and the lively period spectacle cannot make up for it throughout. We recommend the series, but its energy is no guarantee that it will hold the attention consistently. Give it an evening for the cast, with some patience for the passages between their better moments.
Biography
Tom Shankland (born 7 May 1968) is an English film and television director and screenwriter. He was born in Durham, England, where his father taught at the university.
Shankland began with short films including Bait (1999) and Going Down (2000), both nominated for BAFTA Awards. He directed the horror features WΔZ (2007) and The Children (2008), the latter of which he also wrote. His television credits include episodes of Ripper Street (2012), the full first series of The Missing (2014, for which he received a Primetime Emmy nomination), House of Cards (2016), Marvel's The Punisher (2017), The Serpent (2021) and SAS Rogue Heroes (2022). He served as lead director and executive producer on the Netflix series House of Guinness (2025).
