By Caryn James of the BBC
Yasmin (Marisa Abela), an heiress who works at Pierpoint. Photo: Simon Ridgway/HBO
Does anyone enter the world of high finance for altruistic reasons? Ha! That is a laughable idea in Industry, the most cynical show on television. Largely because of that cynicism, it's also one of the best.
The series about young professionals at the London branch of Pierpoint, a major investment bank, is ruthlessly clear-eyed about the cutthroat nature of its business and the competitiveness of its characters who are, if we're being charitable, ethically challenged. If we're being blunt, they are very attractive snakes, slithering around and selling each other out in an atmosphere of high-tension trades and privileged lives fuelled by sex and drugs. It's fascinating and great fun to watch.
One scene in the new, third instalment captures the show in its essence. Yasmin (Marisa Abela), an heiress who works at Pierpoint, does lines of cocaine with her boss, Eric (Ken Leung), obviously a bad idea for many reasons. In a heart-to-heart about Harper (Myha'la) - Yasmin's friend and the person Eric mentored before he fired her at the end of last series - Yasmin says, "I think that deep down Harper is a good person." Eric answers, "I don't think she is." They are definitely high because Industry viewers know that question is pointless - good and bad don't figure into anyone's calculations in this show.
That doesn't mean its characters are unsympathetic. Over two seasons we have seen how damaged they are emotionally, which doesn't excuse their betrayals and manipulations but does give us licence to root for them. Few shows have been better at making us like people who behave in unlikable ways.
There are precedents. Industry is often compared to Succession, with its high stakes business deals and cold-blooded characters, and to Euphoria, full of Gen Z sex and drugs. Both comparisons make some sense, but Industry has its own sharp tone and dynamic. The show's glisteningly cold, upscale office setting is far from Euphoria's grimness. And it has a mix of races and social classes that Succession doesn't. Harper is a middle-class black American and Robert (Harry Lawtey) a working class white British scholarship boy trying to blend in at Pierpoint. Their backgrounds at times pop up to haunt them as they struggle for upward mobility, a widely relatable theme.
The series has been a bit under the radar for understandable reasons. A story about finance can sound dull or intimidating. Industry is neither. The personal entanglements drive the story, and the plots are so lucid there's no need to understand the jargony financial terms the traders throw around.
In the new episodes, Industry is bolder than ever, offering an entirely fresh take on environmentalism, of all the unlikely subjects. Kit Harington, a high-profile addition to the cast, plays Lord Henry Muck, at times a bit of a sexist pig but also ultrarich and charming. He has started a green energy company called Lumi, which Pierpoint is taking public with an IPO. More important, the storyline raises the fundamental issue of whether public good and making money can coexist. The smooth-talking Henry says both things can be true. People around him are more sceptical. Financial watchdogs and competitors wonder if any green company can be viable financially. Eric calls the people behind such companies "just a bunch of suits cosplaying environmentalists". Themes of climate change and environmentalism usually come as earnest warnings on screen, but in its typically cynical way, Industry dares to upset any easy assumptions.
As the trailer has already revealed, there is a sexual charge between Henry and Yasmin, which may or may not go deeper. In Industry, sometimes sex is just fun and sometimes a commodity to be traded like any other stock. But true romance isn't out of the question. Robert has been pining for Yasmin for years, and she has relied on him as a loyal friend with whom she is also happy to flirt. The season teases out a possible romance, or at least a hook-up, between them at last, complicated by Henry. He has his quirks but as Harington plays him he is also somebody's idea of Prince Charming, with an irresistible smile and a pile of an ancestral house that adds an even more opulent layer to this show about money and power.
The returning characters remain themselves, but more so. Harper, at a new company, becomes Pierpoint's unscrupulous competitor. Maybe she was always a snake, maybe she learned it from Eric. He is still at Pierpoint, fearfully gaslighting and betraying anyone who gets in his way.
But Yasmin and Robert are now the show's focus. Her daddy and his mummy issues are intense. We first see Yasmin on her father's yacht, called the Lady Yasmin, where things quickly become traumatic. Back in London, Rob sneaks out of bed with a young woman from Pierpoint to visit Nicole (Sarah Parish), the rich, older woman who has sexually harassed him. Yasmin and Robert make some terrible choices, but they also emerge as the most sympathetic figures. No one has a heart of gold in Industry, but these two often seem outwitted by more manipulative and savvier game-players. By season's end a viewer's heart could break for both of them.
The whiff of sentimentality in the Yasmin-Robert story, suggesting the high cost of ruthless ambition, is rare in the show, with its unsparing take on society. The new episodes depict how sexist stereotypes persist, for example. Eric, worst mentor ever, makes Robert yell, "I'm a man and I'm relentless!" his idea of a pep talk. Rishi (Sagar Radia), their intense colleague at Pierpoint, has a big gambling problem. His wife yells at him, "Do you know what being a man is?" She is not 100 years old, and it seems a weirdly backward-looking accusation from a young woman, but it's in line with the toxic gender assumptions that are never far from the surface in Industry's world.
In a final bold move, Industry seems to blow up its own plots, with all the characters facing such major changes that the show would have to be reconstructed to go on. One of its executive producers recently told Vulture she hopes for more seasons. HBO isn't saying. We're left to puzzle out how the pieces of this explosive, thrilling series might be put back together, a fun game in itself.
- BBC
