Add Industry to your watchlist It’s time to feel uncomfortable again, to care about fictional characters who are not only selfish, ruthless and reckless with other people, but are, to boot, the one-per-cent beneficiaries of late-stage capitalism, laughing in the face of resultant inequalities. Yes, Industry , with Pierpoint investment bank’s young recruits, is back for a third outing, having become a global TV hit. Every character is, by any objective measure, awful, so why do we keep tuning in for them and their bank balances? First, superb casting – the show has made stars of Harry Lawtey, Marisa Abela and David Jonsson.
At its centre, the dysfunctional mentor-pupil relationship of Ken Leung’s Eric and Myha’la’s Harper, free of sexual clichés but charged by awe, respect and betrayal – the pair steal every scene they share. Then there’s the script, authentic thanks to writers Mickey Down and Konrad Kay’s previous immersion in that world. Seeing a trade being executed, with “some puts on the S&P, linked to a call on gold”, is like watching American football: I have no idea what’s going on, except from everyone’s reactions.
But we all know the pain of working for an inconsistently tempered boss, and the pressure of finishing a report in a cab on the way to dinner, even if in Harper’s world she has to stop off to spend £50 on lilies for the table. They’re all money-making monsters but, in defining ways, they remain human. Since before Shakespear.