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Louise Thomas
Editor
The market can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent, or so the over-quoted adage of John Maynard Keynes goes. Fighting those fickle currents, then, is a Sisyphean task, where bankers and traders lurch from one crisis to another. So it is no surprise that these mercurial money markets make a suitable backdrop for drama: not least in the third season of the BBC’s prestige thriller (yes, thriller) Industry, where calm rarely descends for more than a heartbeat.
Having been fired by Pierpoint in the second series finale, off the back of a fabricated academic transcript, Harper (Myha’la) finds herself exiled to a socially conscious fund in the US. Back in London, Robert (Harry Lawtey) is working on the IPO of an energy firm, Lumi, which is run by a bullish toff, Sir Henry Muck (Kit Harington – if the knighthood seems improbable, presumably calling the character “Lord Muck” would’ve been too on-the-nose). It’s a deal that also ensnares the attentions of Yasmin (Marisa Abela), who is distracted by the fallout of her father’s disgrace, not to mention becoming the focus of tabloid gossip columns, and her boss, Eric (Ken Leung), who is rapidly going off the rails. But cracks begin to show as Lumi goes public, and the foundations of Muck’s business look shaky. “Everything’s built on nothing!” he laments, as his board closes in. “That’s how you build something!”
Given the last season of Industry, broadcast in 2022, dealt with the fallout of Covid-19’s impact on global markets, then it should come as no surprise that the new series is rooted in the concerns of the past year. The Kamikwasi mini-budget and COP 27 in Sharm El Sheikh (compared to both Davos and Cannes) both feature as drivers of turbulence. ESG – “environmental, social and governance” investing – is a typically zeitgeisty target for the show. Muck’s business, Lumi, closely resembles failed start-up Bulb (down to the employee numbers), whose collapse in 2021 sparked fears about the solidity of the renewable and off-set energy industry. So, the quarry chosen by writers Mickey Down and Konrad Kay feels plenty topical.
Of course, as ever with Industry, that’s all filtered through the prism of finance’s moral repugnancy. The show’s most daring innovation has always been the sheer viciousness of its characters; their fundamental unlikability. “You work for an investment bank,” Muck tells Robert. “You’re the parasite’s parasite.” And even as Yasmin deals with the impact of her abusive, reckless father, the show never retreats into pitying her. She remains an enigmatic combination of confidence and deep-rooted insecurity (and is the lynchpin of this season’s action). Harington, meanwhile, gives his best performance to date as a brittle, over-hyped CEO. A bottle episode, following the miserable travails of associate Rishi (Sagar Radia, superb) is a virtuoso descent into risk addiction – shot like Uncut Gems in the Leicester Square Hippodrome – but equally uncompromising. Understanding someone doesn’t require forgiving them.
At times, it makes Industry a difficult watch. Attempts to unriddle class dynamics within the sector (“You’re born with a silver spoon in your mouth, people are going to assume you’re an idiot,” Muck tells Yasmin) butt up against the core critique of gamified, high-risk capitalism. The writing sometimes tries too hard to capture the verbosity that marks out writers like Armando Iannucci and Jesse Armstrong – both of whom, coincidentally, do a good line in shows that have no heroes – with insults such as calling a colleague “the Nobel laureate in noncing” striking a bum note. But what Down and Kay are brilliant at is creating a pressure cooker on the trading floor, where each character is both enemy and ally to one another. If the dynamics of Succession were constantly described as Shakespearean, the internal politics of Industry are more like The Weakest Link. You need each other to make money, but you also want to shaft your competitors when you get the opportunity.
For people wanting a quiet evening in front of the telly, Industry is a terrible option. It’s relentless, nasty, sexy, vulgar, and all the other adjectives generally reserved for TripAdvisor reviews of Berghain. But in a world where prestige drama is so focused on humanising troubled people, it’s gripping to watch a drama that takes their humanity as a given and focuses on the troubles. It’s not just the markets that are irrational: most counter-intuitively of all, this third instalment of Industry is, somehow, a lot of fun to watch.
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