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T.The banking drama Industry (BBC Two) has hit our screens with more than a little hype behind it, having already been compared to everything from Succession to Skins, Mad Men to This Life, and with an opening episode directed by Lena Dunham.
Fortunately, the fanfare surrounding this HBO / BBC co-production is completely deserved. The industry is alternately mundane, electrifying, tense, messed up, real and shocking. In the coming weeks, your opinion of its leads will have fluctuated more times than the FTSE 100 did during the Covid pandemic. One of its biggest strengths is that it doesn’t try to explain exactly what all those flashing numbers on its protagonists’ screens mean, while showing the havoc they can cause. A bad day at the office here could mean losing your job or much worse.
US newcomer Myha’la Herrold leads a cast of suitably bright young men who play the central roles. Her character, Harper Stern, is a working-class black woman who comes from a little-known university in New York to participate in the graduate program at London’s elite banking institution, Pierpoint & Co. It’s the kind of place where The old folks’ net still buzzes just below the surface, where Gus (David Jonsson), an Old Etonian and Oxford graduate, impresses in his interview distinguishing between Jesus Christ and Margaret Thatcher with the joke: “One is why we are all here and the other is a carpenter. “
At Pierpoint, you don’t have to be an Oxbridge graduate, or white, or rich, but it doesn’t exactly hurt. The different privileges granted to each of the central characters are subtly delineated as the series continues and their careers approach the time when half of them will be dropped from the graduate program.
Drunk guy Robert (Harry Lawtey) is able to risk a ketamine-filled, vomit-stained evening before a meeting, stumbling like a 90’s Tory MP in a way you think Harper definitely couldn’t, but so does he it’s not from that world. One of the first comic “pieces” (or is it just bullying?) From his elders is the gag that his big dark suit makes him look like a nightclub bouncer. Gus is – along with Harper – one of the few black people in the office, but as an old Etonian he can access worlds that Robert cannot – although other barriers emerge as the story continues. Yasmin (Marisa Abela) comes from a privileged Notting Hill background, but struggles to overcome her role as a team waitress, inflicting her annoyance on the poor saleswoman who has to prepare 80 salads every day.
No one is a pantomime villain or a halo-wearing angel, not least Harper, who makes a shady phone call at the beginning of this first episode. She lied to get into the bank and you get the feeling that Chekhov’s fake university transcript will come back to bite her. That is, if the powerful woman who touches her inappropriately in a cab doesn’t find a way to ruin her first, or her line manager, Daria (Freya Mavor), doesn’t wipe her out with a deadly stare.
If the west wing were walking and talking, industry is eating and working. Its writers – former bankers Mickey Down and Konrad Kay – have created a world where work permeates every area of its characters’ lives at all times. The disturbing story of Hari (Nabhaan Rizwan) brings this reality to its logical conclusion. Based loosely on the kidnapping death of Merrill Lynch intern Moritz Erhardt in 2013, the story sees him pushing himself to the limit, feeding on energy drinks and sleeping in the office bathroom. It is clear that keeping your head above water will be the main focus here. Thriving would be great, of course, but it’s all about surviving.
The industry boasts excellent writing. Ben Lloyd-Hughes’ Greg, in particular, like his eponymous Succession, gets some of the best lines, including an incredibly realistic rant about what Nike really thinks about social justice. But its greatest strength is to bring all of its elements together into a more sour package in which relationships – friendly, romantic and work-oriented, three categories that often overlap – are constantly in flux and tension is ever increasing. When you reach the heartbreaking conclusion of episode five, you may even – shock horror – feel sorry for some of these. What’s the point of having exorbitant, high-thread count sheets, like Yasmin, when there’s so much to keep you up at night?
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