In the first lockdown, the nation was seemingly united in its obsession with the BBC’s adaptation of Sally Rooney’s novel Normal People. But in the second, things were a bit more fuzzy, culturally speaking, unless, that is, you were one of those who watched Industry, in which case the dark November of 2020 was punctuated by some pretty indelible television. OK, so its characters were all monsters, cruel and lewd and venal; its acronym-strewn dialogue was frequently impenetrable, its sex scenes invariably on the wrong side of #MeToo and its plot enigmatic (set on the trading floor of a City investment bank, much of the so-called action involved people staring dully for minutes at a time at the blue light of their screens). And yet, those of us who loved it could hardly wait for each episode to begin. Unaccountably thrilling and utterly addictive, it was, I thought at the time, the bastard child of This Life and early Neil LaBute – and what’s not to like about that?
Konrad Kay, who co-wrote Industry with his old friend, Mickey Down, laughs (we’re in a studio in deepest north London, where both men are visibly relieved the agony of posing for a photographer is now over). “Yeah,” he says. “Someone else called it Tory Skins, which is good, too.” But in the end, comparisons, however flattering or neat, may be redundant. Not only does Industry stand at an unlikely angle to almost everything else on TV right now, which may be one reason why it remains, in his words, “a bit cultish”, but the long-awaited second series, which will be screened in the UK next month, comes with a lot more… texture than the first.
