Every once in a while a TV show comes along that smacks you in the face with its high stakes drama, sign of the times commentary, and it dares you to imagine how much further, which moral low point it could go to next.
It keeps popping up in meetings, usually an investment banker or lawyer saying - our culture is great, and nothing like that TV show they’re all watching. Yes, they mean Industry.
When it started in 2021 Industry was like a super charged version of the 90s coming of age drama This Life: edgy, zeitgeisty, young, sweary and tinged with darkness and foreboding. It also made superstars of Jack Davenport and Andrew Lincoln (though scandalously not Daniela Nardini).
But now that we’re on season four of Industry, all available on the BBC iPlayer, it seems more like that other, must-see, can’t look away, screen depiction of the worst excesses of capitalism - Succession. It also shares with that televisual masterpiece the accomplished feat of creating an entire cast of characters you never actually like very much. Each one comes coloured with different shades of dreadful, ever capable of ethical breaches, self serving greed and appalling morality.
Industry started by following the contrasting paths of a bunch of graduates embarking on life at fictional London investment bank Pierpoint. Pulsing with sexual tension and twisted manipulation, it quickly pivots around the twists and turns in the relationships between American CV forger Harper Stern (the actor known known mononymously as Myha’la), silver spooned international publishing heiress Yasmin Kara-Hanani (Marisa Abela) and working class Robbie Spearing from a council estate in Hull (played by Harry Lawtey). Though a slow burner, it nonetheless earned Lawtey and Abela roles depicting Richard Burton and Amy Winehouse (as well as a BAFTA), and they won’t be the only talent propelled up the A list by this series.
It rubs against real events very tightly, post-COVID, the KamiKwazi budget, the 2024 election, and how that all rippled through the trading floors of the city. There’s real drama when they’re shorting the pound, or second guessing government policy - proving that markets can be moved and can topple governments.
So, yes I could sell it to you on the basis of the script, the realism, the glamour, the filthy language, and the acting - even, my fellow geeks, the accompanying music and the next level sound design - but as we’re up to season four now, the air is still thick with the same level of tension, action and intrigue, and the reason you have to delve in now is because it has suddenly got very Rainmakers adjacent.
Our very first piece on this platform was about the collapse of an African fintech app. Just saying. A recent episode, no spoilers, has such close parallels to the story about the German payments unicorn Wirecard that even the music overlaid one of the dramatic scenes was Forever Young by Alphaville, surely no coincidence that the name of the FT column in which Dan McCrum shattered Wirecard’s facade, amidst accusations he was colluding with short sellers, was Alphaville.
On our Rainmakers Substack we take you occasionally into the darker corners of mergers and acquisitions, sometimes murders and executions, and this should be a warning that due diligence, bold EBITDA forecast claims and family shareholder preference rights can and are the stuff of everyday life on the frontline of your world.
The experience of former bankers Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, as Creators, Writers and Executive Producers carried the show so far, now a sprawling jungle is growing out of the vacillating reputations of the main protagonists. They also use their characters to propel forward the twisted plotlines with their own warps and flaws, there is never a sense that you are going to warm to them, to empathise, to get a deeper understanding of their motives and horrendous capacity to mess up.
No spoilers, but Down and Kay have said of this current season - “It was a fantastic and experiential precinct and gave the show it’s velocity and immersive feel, but we felt we could take that energy out into the world and broaden the canvas to deepen what the show was saying about capitalism and the feedback loop of finance, politics and media, while also introducing us to a broader array of characters.”
Adding: “We wanted the show to centre on a global story with more stakeholders.”
Yes, the media. There’s a journalist in season four, Jim Dycker, with a complex about Patrick Radden Keefe (we all have) as well as an unravelling dark back story. I liked his depiction because he’s significantly poorer than everyone else, he inhabits a shabby council flat and works for a niche title called FinDigest (I’m sure they were on the floor downstairs from us when I worked in the trade press in London).
It works because as the creators have said “people like watching people work” and you just don’t know where they’ll go next, it’s like the first show I’ve seen since Succession that I also can’t comfortably predict what any character is capable of doing next.
For a professional audience in a similar world, I can confidently say that the rigour the creators have applied isn’t just fun, but provocative and at times properly funny.
Even though we are now well into the fourth series, seriously, what else are you going to do?
So do it. Binge the lot, and do it now, it’s better than Night Manager and you could credibly make a case that watching it qualifies you for extra CPD points.
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