Spoiler alert: this recap is published after episode one of Industry season two airs on BBC One in the UK. Do not read on if you haven’t watched it.
Grab your uppers and downers, keep your enemies close and your line managers closer, and watch out for that plunging pound! Productivity may be down, but Industry is back for another season of bad people making even worse people pots of money.
The first season drew critical acclaim for its insight into the steely nerves and shaky morals of the finance world, finding drama in computer screens full of figures and humanity in the least humane of environments.
Now, after a stellar run in the US, season two lands in the UK and we are recapping it weekly, as part of the massive deal brokered for the paper’s cameo in season one. Just kidding! No Pierpoint exec worth their weight in blow would accept me as their chronicler: a media studies graduate who gave up maths at 15 and thought that references to “the City” were just Londoners being myopic. (“There are other cities, you know,” I huffed.)
These recaps therefore come with the caveat that (from my Googling of “City slang”) I am a “piker”: “somebody who pretends to know everything about the street but doesn’t actually know anything, and makes very little money.”
Like Carrie Bradshaw at the stock exchange – as the Guardian’s self-appointed captain of Industry – I now declare this marketplace of ideas: open.
Episode one: Daddy
Season one concluded with our central quartet of Harper, Yasmin, Robert and Gus more clear-eyed about their future at Pierpoint, but also more battle-scarred.
With the exception of Gus (whom we only glimpse in this episode, still cohabiting with Rob and doing the box-bleach hair-dye job that is the mark of the quarter-life crisis), all have secured their futures at the prestigious investment bank – although not without losses.
Harper (Myha’la Herrold) ended Reduction in Force day having walked out of her final interview with a panic attack, and thrown Yasmin’s executive ally under the bus to save her own uneasy office champion-cum-father figure Eric (Ken Leung).
The move cost Harper her friendship with Yas (Marisa Abela), and Yas her escape route from the toxic FX desk. Robert (Harry Lawtey), meanwhile, had the kind of crisis of confidence that makes buying a motorbike seem like a good idea.
Now – as we glean from season two’s opening montage, showing all three noticeably siloed – not only Pierpoint but the Covid-19 pandemic has left its mark.
Yasmin is single, having ditched her deadbeat aspiring supper-chef boyfriend, and mingling, often despite lockdown orders. Sweet Bobby, “having struck out three times”, is too rattled by the sword of Damocles hanging over his head even to make a phone call.
And Harper – historically the least risk-averse of the three – has spent the past year working remotely from a four-star hotel, refusing to heed calls to come back to the office and blaming her “super-temperamental” internet.
Industry showrunners Mickey Down and Konrad Kay (two of the youngest in HBO’s history, and ex-City themselves: Down quit, Kay was fired) have publicly disparaged their first season, calling it disjointed and lacking in plot. Season two is much more assertive with its story arc, notably in the introduction of Jesse Bloom (Jay Duplass), or “Mr Covid”: the businessman who turned millions into billions through the pandemic, and who Harper hopes will boost her flagging stock at work.
On top of the shifting sands of “Covid-era profits”, Brexit too is stirring tensions between the New York and London offices, and piling on the pressure to “do more with less” or face redundancies.
“Your worth to the firm is who you know outside the firm,” Harper is told. Her attention, meanwhile, is consumed by Insta-stalking one mysterious @pogdaddy911 – we assume an ex-lover (or perhaps her missing brother?) – apparently in Berlin.
This instantly, adeptly opens up Industry’s scope. Thus far the show has been only peripherally interested in the world beyond Pierpoint towers; this season premiere suggests that Down and Kay have accepted that, in these unprecedented times, it can no longer be ignored. It can even add to the drama. As much as we were encouraged to believe we were “all in the same boat” through the pandemic, some have emerged better off.
Likewise, the post-lockdown jitters in the office have aggravated the paranoia and self-interest that always lurked beneath the surface.
Now, declares Eric, the game is about being seen to succeed: for the London office, having to justify its existence to “the mothership”, and for those workers like Harper perceived not to be pulling their weight. The bullish trader Rishi in particular seems to be shaping up as an antagonist.
In short, it is a dog-eat-dog world – and these ones have been subsisting on takeaway pizzas for a year. Harper and Rob seem hollowed out, as if the thrill of the deal or a biweekly bender might no longer sustain them; while Eric is swinging that baseball bat on the office floor like he might have to use it (likely on Danny Van Deventer, the “spy” sent over from New York).
Yasmin has other challenges. True to her nepo-baby privilege – her golden goose at Pierpoint, Maxim, is a family friend – she seems to have weathered the pandemic so far unscathed. But just as she has got on top of the game, she finds the rules have changed.
Her boss Kenny (Conor MacNeill) is newly sober, his magnanimity nearly as awful as his misogyny – and for Yas, having painstakingly “established herself”, harder to cope with.
When “brilliant new grad” Venetia swans in with the same self-belief that Yas had bullied out of her, refusing to do the gendered office housework that Yas was led to believe was obligatory, she lashes out, perpetuating the cycle. Her superiors chide her that “we’re better than that”, and a shadow passes beneath Yas’s impassive exterior: they weren’t to her.
When her relationship with Maxim comes crashing down, Yas seeks a life raft with the glamorous Celeste, whom she takes for a “sex professional”. In fact, Celeste is “selling herself” in Pierpoint’s private wealth management team. It’s clear that they have each other’s attention, though Celeste’s motives in “playing with” Yas remain to be seen.
Rob, meanwhile, pulls off a successful Hail Mary pass with Nicole, the client who, unbeknown to him, assaulted Harper (then bailed her out) last season. And Harper, no longer able to count on Eric’s support as he urges her to seek counselling (while strongly implying that it may not be kept confidential) is seeking security through Mr Covid.
Pierpoint’s “happy fucking families” are under more strain than usual post-pandemic, and no alliance is secure. “I guess this means the world really is ending,” says Yasmin, just before Maxim reveals himself as the manager of her family’s wealth.
In Industry, as in The Hunger Games, personal myths and loyalties are just as central to survival as numbers on the board. What makes it so exhilarating is that we don’t know whether we’re rooting for our characters to win, or walk away. They may not yet know themselves.
Closing up
Rob goes from eyeballing his desk phone as if it might devour him to coming close to charming Nicole with his plea for her to bear with him: “This is my last-ditch attempt to actually do my job.” Honesty is a high-risk, high-reward strategy, but it seems Rob has found his outside line.
Closing down
Yas was quite literally riding high at the start of the episode, the halo cast by her family’s wealth protecting her even from Covid. By its end, she has fled to the 12th floor and cast off her Burberry, pleading for sanctuary with Celeste.
Most impenetrable City speak
“As you know, the layup trade over the past 12 months has been selling the dollar.” Maxim may know, but I certainly don’t (though even Rishi is floored by “meme stocks”).
Best burn
Rishi: “Do you want a guided tour of your irrelevancy to me?”
Boldest power play
A tie between slinky Celeste, showing off her savvy to Yas with “I was behind the decks when Solomon dropped it at Boneca” (cool histoire, bro) and Rishi’s perfectly pitched, “posh enough to podcast” fiancee, urging Harper to read Ta-Nehisi Coates.
Lowest ebb
Robert being accused of looking nothing like his profile and being “in recovery of something” by a cold-hearted hook-up. Let’s hope she was at least satisfied by her UberLUX home.
Industry season two is on BBC One in the UK, HBO Max in the US and Binge in Australia
