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PORTSIDE CULTURE

INDUSTRY IS THE SOAPY, SLEAZY SPECTACLE PRESTIGE TV IS MISSING  
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Kyndall Cunningham
August 11, 2024
Vox
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_ How is a show about banking more fun than anything else. _

Actors Kit Harington and Marisa Abela in Industry season three. , HBO


 

Kyndall Cunningham
[[link removed]] is a culture writer
interested in reality TV, movies, pop music, Black media, and
celebrity culture. Previously, she wrote for the Daily Beast and
contributed to several publications, including Vulture, W Magazine,
and Bitch Media.

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_Industry, _now in its third season, has lived in the shadow of two
HBO juggernauts, _Euphoria_ and_ Succession_, for the past four
years. Its similarities with _Succession_ in particular — British
creators, corporate settings, despicable characters, acerbic dialogue,
gray-toned palettes — have made it difficult for the show about
young, ketamine-snorting bankers to capture everyone’s attention.

But now that it’s been said
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including on this very website
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that the overall quality of scripted television is not what it once
was, it seems like a perfect time for an ever-improving show to reset
our expectations for what prestige TV can be.

The well-touted notion that _Industry_ is an heir
to _Succession _seems like good marketing. And the show’s writers
and co-creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay have embraced the
comparisons with a sense of humor. “If _Industry_ had the same arc
[as _Succession_], me and Mickey would be quite happy,” Kay
told the Daily Beast
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2022. In the season two finale, they even inserted a winking reference
to Kendall Roy. Vulture also released a profile
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the show’s casts and creators titled
“Can _Industry_ succeed _Succession_?” as the new season takes
on_ Succession_’s former Sunday time slot.

However, the suggestion that these two series scratch the same itch or
that _Industry_ is aiming to be like_ Succession_ feels like
critics’ underselling of the show. While _Industry _has all the
markers of a sophisticated, bougie drama, it feels more spiritually
akin to a messy teen soap like _Gossip Girl_.

That certainly isn’t a bad thing. In fact, it’s exactly what this
overly brooding, monotonous state of television needs. One of the most
impressive things about _Industry _is how it avoids many of prestige
TV’s reigning problems. While supposedly high-brow shows have become
predictable, with their focus on trauma and grief as main qualities of
the human experience, _Industry_ seems to be one of the few shows
interested in offering viewers naughtiness and pleasure.

THE CONVENTIONS OF “PRESTIGE TV” HAVE BECOME LIMITING … AND
BORING

_Industry_’s first season followed a group of post-graduates —
with the exception of protagonist Harper Stern (Myha’la), whose
transcript is a little less complete than her bosses understand —
vying for permanent positions at the fictional investment bank
Pierpoint & Co. in London. Right away, they’re met with abuse and
impossible demands from tyrannical bosses and inappropriate
colleagues, including the hair-raising sales manager Eric Tao (Ken
Leung).

The onscreen depravity isn’t limited to Pierpoint’s higher-ups,
though. The show’s promising young bankers — particularly Harper
and publishing heir Yasmin Kara-Hanani (Marisa Abela) — play all
sorts of mental and sexual games with each other and their peers to
climb the corporate ladder. Almost every interaction is deceptive or
transactional. Vulnerability can rarely be trusted.

[Actors Myha’la and Sarah Goldberg in Industry season three.]
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Actors Myha’la and Sarah Goldberg in _Industry_ season three.

 HBO

On a show about depraved, broken people, it’s refreshing that Down
and Kay refrain from relying on a narrative device that’s become a
rather tiring cliché in prestige television — the trauma plot. In
a 2021 New Yorker essay, Parul Sehgal
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about the prevalent use of a single devastating backstory to easily
explain the totality of characters, leaving little mystery and denying
consumers a morally complicated experience. “The trauma plot
flattens, distorts, reduces character to symptom, and, in turn,
instructs and insists upon its moral authority,” she wrote.

This sense of predictability — and simplicity — has lessened the
impact of quite a few shows recently, like the buzzy Netflix
miniseries _Baby Reindeer_
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Despite the miniseries’ potential to go into strange and ambiguous
directions, it offers a pretty obvious theory in the end about the
show’s troubling stalker, Martha — she had a bad childhood.

In other cases, the excessive use of backstory can inhibit plot
movement or character development. Take _Euphoria_, for example,
maybe the biggest offender in this regard. For its first two seasons,
the show was so concerned with revisiting its characters’
devastating pasts that it had no idea where they were going in the
show’s present. As a result, season two was meandering and
motionless
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hammering down on the same character details. It wasn’t much of a
surprise that Sam Levinson’s follow-up miniseries _The Idol_
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fell apart on much the same basis.

Similar comments were made about the latest season of _The
Bear, _which landed as a disappointment among fans and critics. In a
review for Slate
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writer Jack Hamilton criticized the season’s “incessant use of
flashbacks” to avoid “the show itself actually moving forward.”

It’s not that the characters in _Industry_ aren’t deeply
troubled by their upbringings and familial relationships. For example,
Harper and Yasmin’s colleague Robert Spearing (Harry Lawtey) has
vaguely described mommy issues that lead to an inappropriate
relationship with a predatory woman client at Pierpoint and probably
his submissive sexual dynamic with Yasmin. Harper is the product of an
abusive mom. It’s also evident that bad boss Eric’s lust for
dominance comes from being perceived and underestimated as a
“diversity hire” throughout his career.

The writers never dwell on this information for too long though, nor
do they feed us that many details. The story still functions, even if
these personal details never completely explain why these reckless
20-somethings and their mean supervisors are the way they are.
Instead, they propel the characters forward, leading to exciting plot
turns and head-scratching decisions.

The best case of this is the portrayal of Yasmin’s fractured
relationship with her father (Adam Levy). A lazier show would spend an
inordinate amount of time revisiting the wounds Yasmine accrued from
her dad during her childhood. Instead, Yasmine’s daddy issues are an
obstacle she has to escape in the present. When she discovers her
father’s sexual misconduct in season two, it provides a mirror for a
sexual relationship she has with a mentor at Pierpoint and when she
embarks on her own power trip as she makes moves within the company.
In season three, her father’s legal troubles come back to haunt her,
causing her to negotiate her morals once again.

IN ALL OF ITS CHAOS, _INDUSTRY_ HASN’T LOST SIGHT OF WHAT MAKES IT
GOOD

As critics
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arguably _Industry_’s best offering yet. After being ousted from
Pierpoint in the second season finale, Harper has a new job and a new
manager, Petra Koenig (Sarah Goldberg) to test with her risky, often
legally dubious business moves. Meanwhile, at Pierpoint, the company
invests in a new client, a green-energy company called Lumi founded by
an incompetent CEO Henry Muck (Kit Harington), which triggers an
avalanche of problems at the bank.

While Harper is still fighting a one-sided war with Tao and Pierpoint,
her former co-workers seem a bit more deflated and disillusioned than
in previous seasons. Tao is confronted with how disempowering his new
position as a partner at Pierpoint actually is. Yasmin realizes that
she can’t overcome the lifelong curse of coming from a messed-up
family through her work. Arguably, the best episode of the season is
centered on Pierpoint associate Rishi Ramdani (Sagar Radia), whose
greed (and dickishness) finally reaches a tipping point.

Overall, Kay and Down have become more skilled at executing plotlines,
experimenting with cinematography, and nailing the show’s frenetic
pacing. While season two was a little heavy-handed with its commentary
on representational politics and “glass ceiling” feminism, season
three feels light on its feet.

[Lawtey and Harington having a conversation.]
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Actors Harry Lawtey and Kit Harington in _Industry_ season three.

 HBO

Stress and turmoil may still define these characters’ lives, but
watching them navigate their mostly self-inflicted problems is
surprisingly more fun and funny this time around. The writers seem
more interested in creating amusing (but smart) plotlines for
entertainment’s sake rather than hammering down on the show’s
already underlying thesis on the pitfalls of capitalism. At the end of
the day, _Industry_ is a show about horny, foolish, mostly young
adults who desperately need therapy.

The fact that _Industry_ has gotten better over time is a huge
relief. At this point, we’ve watched several popular, critically
acclaimed shows — _The Bear_
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Eve_, _Big Little Lies_, etc. — lose their way after one or two
good seasons. (I might be the only person who thinks
that _Succession _got worse after season two.) The constraints of
streaming have allowed creators to become more self-indulgent in their
work. Certain shows have felt more focused on experimenting with
structure to the point where it doesn’t feel like they’re
interested in making TV anymore — rather, college-level film
projects. Others seem to bend to the demands of social media,
like _Succession_, which gradually lost its “eat the rich” bite
in favor of sympathizing with fan-favorite characters.

Thankfully, _Industry_ hasn’t succumbed to any of these tendencies
yet — maybe, in part, because it hasn’t been showered with awards
or received a large amount of attention. Instead, the show keeps
reflecting what prestige TV still has the potential to be in an era of
forgettable television — engrossing characters, smart storytelling,
and a respect for the medium as we knew it before Netflix and Twitter.

_____

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Thank you for being part of our community.

[Swati Sharma]

Swati Sharma

Vox Editor-in-Chief

* Industry
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* banking
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* capitalism
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