“I think about you less than I think about climate change,” a colleague tells Harper Stern in the new season of Industry, HBO’s razor-sharp, London-set series about the combative, cocaine-fuelled arena of international banking. The insult reveals as much about the show’s milieu as it does Harper’s ostracised junior banker, who’s been using Covid as an excuse not to show her face on the sales floor.
In reality, Harper (Myha’la Herrold), who works at fictional investment firm Pierpoint, is avoiding the fallout from the ice-cold double-crossing she executed at the end of season one, which saw a progressive female mentor fired in favour of Eric, a company man who thrives on the abusive workplace culture. By comparison, Harper feels performatively ruthless, and Herrold is assiduous in letting the college-dropout’s humanity accidentally reveal itself. Sometimes she even cries.
