I am routinely asked, by friends and family, for television recommendations. It’s my job, after all. And there are plenty of shows I love recommending – Mad Men, Gilmore Girls, M*A*S*H – and feel confident won’t reflect badly on either party. And then there’s Square Mile drama Industry, a show that is so good that it deserves to be recommended, but so icky that watching it makes me feel like an unbathed incel. The fact that it returns on BBC One this week, for its fourth season, with more hype than ever, is a sign that its vicious satire is hitting the mark.
Tender – a payments processor for seedy porn and gambling sites – is trying to go legit. Its founders, Whitney (Max Minghella) and Jonah (Kal Penn), are applying for a banking licence, a task that requires the involvement of both financial institutions and government officials. But is there something fishy about this clean-up act for the self-anointed “PayPal of bukkake”? The process of going straight brings Tender into the orbit of both Harper (Myha’la), burning through another volatile self-started fund, and Yasmin (Marisa Abela), whose primary concern seems to be massaging the ego of her husband, Henry (Kit Harington), who has slipped into substance abuse since the failure of his start-up, Lumi. “I failed upwards and then failed totally,” he laments. “There are no second acts.” But Tender’s search for legitimacy needs some roots in British society, offering Henry and Yasmin a chance to leverage their aristocratic ties.
