HBO's Industry is like Working Girl for a new generation

TIME

"The finance guy has been a stock character ever since Gordon Gekko slithered onto the screen in 1987, with his slicked-back hair and suspenders, preaching the gospel of greed," says Judy Berman of the Lena Dunham-produced HBO finance drama from creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay. "If Wall Street created the crude, cocky, womanizing, cocaine-hoovering, white-guy archetype, then American Psycho took it nuclear with Patrick Bateman, a Reagan-era psycho killer who sauntered off the pages of Bret Easton Ellis’ 1991 novel into Mary Harron’s scathing satirical film from 2000. The Great Recession touched off another wave of finance bros: The Big Short, Margin Call, The Wolf of Wall Street, Wall Street sequel Money Never Sleeps and, on TV, Billions. We’ve seen a handful of nominally diversified variations on the theme, from Mike Nichols’ post-feminist touchstone Working Girl to Black Monday, a Showtime comedy about Black, queer and female outliers at an upstart firm in the mid-’80s. Yet neither the interchangeable Type-A personalities nor the noisy, overstimulated, testosterone-poisoned genre has evolved much over the course of two generations during which public opinion toward finance has shifted. Which is why it’s surprising to see HBO’s Industry—a smart and contemporary, if almost comically libidinous, take on London high finance—attract so little advance attention. Premiering Nov. 9, the ensemble drama follows a cohort of post-collegiate recruits at the fictional firm Pierpoint & Co. This so-called 'graduate' program pits the entry-level workers against one another for permanent job offers, in a competition made extra awkward and stressful by the fact that they’re also the center of each other’s social lives. Amid an atmosphere thick with performative confidence, where a tiny mistake could end a career before it’s properly begun, new hires must not only prove their mettle, but also calculate how their race, class, gender and sexuality might influence their prospects in a field that isn’t exactly known for its tolerance."

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• Industry is the most Shondaland show not produced by Shonda Rhimes: "If you took away the sheen of HBO, the nudity and the British setting, much of Industry’s sudsiness would have been right at home in a prime-time Shondaland slot at ABC in recent years," says Hank Stuever. "Based on the first four episodes that HBO made available for review (there are eight in all), the show’s entanglements and provocations are what manage to pull a viewer in. The dropped opportunity here is one of meaning and intent. We get that greed is good, but Industry’s message, which could be a lot stronger, is that greed itself has become a rapidly vanishing resource. The point for these zuppies is to get whatever’s left, before it’s all gone."
• Industry feels too much like the pre-COVID daily grind than an escape from the grind itself: "While brokers, traders, bankers, and financial managers may know all the terminology being tossed around the floor, it’s safe to say the majority of viewers aren’t as steeped in the lingo," says Ben Travers. "(I, for one, admittedly don’t even know if the four jobs I just described are distinct from each other.) (Creators Mickey) Down and (Konrad) Kay, two former finance workers, craft convincing scenarios for their top-tier banking business; it’s just hard to appreciate the stakes of each crisis when you’re not sure what’s going on. It’s even unclear what’s on the line for our main characters. Yes, they’re fighting for a permanent position at Pierpoint, but what’s that worth? Financially, what do they stand to gain? Personally, what’s their motivation for being there? Is this the best bank to work for? Will they be blacklisted or otherwise ostracized if they don’t make the cut and have to seek employment elsewhere? None of these answers are clear, which makes it difficult to invest in the many, many business dealings Industry relies on for its drama."
• Greed is still good in Industry, but it's shown from a diverse perspective: "The story of proving yourself is a timeless one, but Industry grounds its narrative in our current, confounding times, where political chasms are the norm and romance (which, in Industry, is near-anonymous sex) is facilitated by apps," says Danette Chavez. "Donald Trump, Jeremy Corbyn, and their failures in leadership are name-checked, along with a string of 21st-century financial crises. Greed is still good, as far as Eric and the rest of the Pierpoint staff are concerned, but those capitalizing on it are no longer just white men. That latter point helps set Industry apart from similar series about the world of finance and high-stress workplaces. Down and Kay, who wrote half of season one’s episodes, do consider what the capitalist rat race looks like for those who have historically brought up the rear, including women of color like Harper and Yasmin. When a (white, male) potential roommate tells Harper it’s “gauche to judge success with money,” she responds, 'Not if you never had any.'"
• The more seriously you take Industry, the less satisfying it's bound to feel: "The more you can detach it from reality and accept that it's essentially a series about twentysomething sexcapades with a 'first job' backdrop — like a kinkier version of Freeform's The Bold Type — in which characters occasionally blather about currency exchanges and shorting stocks, the less distracted you'll be by the fact that you're basically beholding an expensive London-set Petri dish," says Daniel Fienberg, adding: "Throw in a relentless use of unexplained financial jargon and watching Industry is like crash-landing on a distant planet. It's borderline science fiction, which is odd since the first episode was directed by Lena Dunham, whose aesthetic and narrative M.O. tends to be more along the lines of 'chaotic-realistic.'"
• Industry initially has the vibe of a reality-show competition in which we see which of our contestants has the stuff to get hired: "But soon, that element of the show becomes less important, instead embedding us in this high-stress environment as Harper and the others fight to establish their niche," says Tim Grierson. "Harper’s emotionless boss Eric (an excellent Ken Leung) quickly takes a shine to her: He sees in this fellow person of color an outsider like him who had to prove to others that he belonged. Eric is as close as Industry gets to a Gordon Gekko type, and it’s not even that close. That doesn’t make him any less intimidating, though. Sometimes threateningly clutching a baseball bat as he roams around his desk on the trading floor, he’s an unsmiling, hardass mentor, and he expects results — and Harper quickly discovers what the consequences can be if she screws up. But the workday pressure is only part of Industry’s drama. Horny, insecure and filled with restless energy, the graduates spend their off-hours hooking up — not with each other, at least not yet, but with anyone who’s available."
• Industry revels in toxic workplaces, which isn't a bad thing: "It’s a crowded space literally and figuratively," says Amber Dowling. "The bustling tight quarters of the banking floor are a downright antithesis to social distancing during these current coronavirus times. Those loud, hectic shots are juxtaposed with quiet moments of reflection from the core cast as they gaze around and contemplate how they got there. Or, what to do next—it’s not always clear. When the action does pick up, themes of gender, race, class, and privilege are crammed into nearly every scene, as higher ups exercise their power, cajole, threaten and highlight what kind of future may be in store for these youngins should they continue down this path."
• Industry is a more high-toned and raunchy Grey’s Anatomy: "Industry is a fairly straightforward workplace drama about a group of attractive women and men in their early twenties trying on adulthood with very high financial stakes," says Alan Sepinwall. "It’s not so much Succession (or even Showtime’s Billions) as it is a more high-toned and raunchy Grey’s Anatomy," says Alan Sepinwall. "There’s even an early scene where senior manager Eric (Ken Leung) gives the rookies — Harper, Robert, eager-to-please Yasmin (Marisa Abela), arrogant Gus (David Jonsson), and anxious Hari (Nabhaan Rizwan) — the familiar speech from this kind of show, about how everyone needs to look to their left and then their right because half of them are going to drop out of such a pressurized environment. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. At this precarious and isolating moment in our history, the show’s lifestyle-porn aspects — not just the abundant recreational drug use and sex, but even the rush of working in close quarters for a group of demanding bosses — feel more intoxicating than perhaps intended."
• Creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay met at university and worked in the world of finance before becoming writers: "We were working with the production company called Bad Wolf on another project when its CEO, Jane Tranter, discovered that she had two guys that used to work in finance working for her," said Down. "She said, 'Have you ever tried to make a show about it?' And we told her we had (but it) was just disastrous in terms of how bad it was. And she said, 'have you ever thought about writing around your experiences? Have you ever thought about writing from the people at the bottom?' and that was the sort of key that unlocked the show."