Many dramas – especially good ones – don’t become major hits overnight. Think of the likes of Game of Thrones or Succession, which needed time to warm up, and some jaw-dropper episodes (namely the Red Wedding and Kendall bumping off a waiter, respectively) to really get going. Industry is one such show – the slow-burn HBO/BBC series that firmly hit its stride in season three. Good news: season four is even better, truly top-tier television that’s surely destined for end-of-year lists, a serious feat when we’re barely a week into January.
Industry is, of course, the one about young investment bankers, the drama that initially drew comparisons with This Life, and the show where our fresh-faced grads were as likely to be hooking up with one another as they were to be stabbing each other in the back. Fast forward to season four and it’s feeling decidedly more dark and debauched, while still held together with pitch-perfect dialogue. Kiernan Shipka – here, vastly closer to Don Draper than to his daughter, Sally, whom she played in Mad Men – Max Minghella, Kal Penn and Charlie Heaton are among the big names who have joined the cast this time around. They meld seamlessly with our existing leads – the mononymous Myha’la, Marisa Abela, Kit Harington – to make something more twisted and sophisticated than viewers may be expecting. Props, too, for Toheeb Jimoh of Ted Lasso for integrating flawlessly; his jaunt over the Atlantic with Miriam Petche as Sweetpea is a treat in particular.
