On the HBO drama series “Industry,” a baseball bat makes a recurring appearance. Early in the show’s first season, which follows a group of recent college graduates during their cutthroat first year at the London office of fictional investment bank Pierpoint & Co., the baseball bat becomes synonymous with grizzled Pierpoint veteran Eric Tao ( Ken Leung ), who menacingly swings it around the trading floor.
Equal parts mentor and adversary to his underlings, Eric reveals himself to be much more than he appears, thanks to the strength of the show’s writing and Leung’s decades of batting 1,000 in small but memorable roles. But Eric’s baseball bat always returns, like in the show’s new season, when he tells the typically bombastic Rishi (Sagar Radia) to rein it in during a disastrous trading day. “You can’t threaten violence on the floor,” Eric says, baseball bat in hand.
Few shows create tension like “Industry,” a show that dials up the anxiety and takes big swings, all while punching far above its weight. In a given scene, you don’t have to know anything about the financial jargon being thrown around to know that something is going terribly, terribly wrong: a risky trade, a deal falling through, a character making an ill-advised decision. During its first and second seasons, “Industry,” inspired by creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay’s experiences working in banking, built up a small but mighty fan base.
Compared to some of HBO’s more high-profi.