“I’ve got the brains, you’ve got the looks / Let’s make lots of money,” goes the 1986 Pet Shop Boys single “Opportunities”. It’s the song that closes the opening episode of Industry‘s third series, and its lyrics perfectly sum up the ambitions of the hot (and horrible) young things of Konrad Kay and Mickey Down’s Succession-meets-Skins financial drama.
Industry, which first aired in 2020, follows the chaotic, stressful lives of the backstabbing, duplicitous, sexy and ruthless young traders at fictional London investment bank Pierpoint and Co. Fans (and I am one) will tell you it’s one of the best series on TV – although few could call the viewing experience “pleasant”. Between the drug use (at one point in the new series, a character does a bump of coke and blood drips from his nose onto the head of his newborn baby), sex, violence and Nathan Micay’s pulsating score, watching it – and in particular the ratcheting tension between the central trio of Yasmin, Harper and Robert – is like trying to focus beneath migraine-inducing office strip lights.
It’s been two years since the second series, but the propulsive third picks up months later with the troubled Yasmin (Marisa Abela) reckoning with the actions of her scammy, scummy father, who cut her off, went on the run, and has left her in London branded the “embezzler heiress”. She’s being hounded by paparazzi and it’s putting her job – now on the trading floor, under the gaze of Eric (Ken Leung) ,who has no problem breaching the boss-friend-enemy boundaries with his female employees – in jeopardy.
Meanwhile, Harper (Myha’la) – sacked from Pierpoint at the end of the last season – is working at investment firm FutureDawn, and Robert (Harry Lawtey) is struggling to focus on a big deal when his entanglements with a past client are haunting him.
“Impact investing” is this series’s major theme. Is Pierpoint is trying to face forward with all its talk of ESGs (Environmental, Social and Governance investing) and its sponsoring of new renewable energy start-up Lumi, run by the impeccably named hipster-toff Sir Henry Muck (Game of Thrones’s Kit Harington)? Or is it just greenwashing, or as one character calls it, “a palliative we give ourselves to feel better”? Unsurprisingly, a climate conference in Switzerland makes it clear that profit will always trump saving the planet. Industry has always been nihilistic.
Harington is a brilliant addition to this series – this is a career-best performance. Henry is so cartoonish it would be easy for him to turn Industry into a posh-guy farce. But wisely, the actor isn’t overused, making Henry’s – ahem – unusual fetishes and hilarious zingers (“It’s a shame that the heart palpitations you get off shit gear don’t count as cardio”) all the more absorbing. Lumi fits every cliché of the brightly-coloured millennial workplace. Sure, the staff are napping at work due to exhaustion, but at least they can do it in a geometric sleep pod!
And while the drama between the central trio gets messier and messier – Abela is brilliant and reminds us all of her raw talent after the mess that was Amy Winehouse biopic Back to Black – the standout episode of the season actually focuses on the consistently awful trader Rishi (Sagar Radia) and the dark financial holes he’s got himself into – both personally and at Pierpoint.
Rishi is one of the most morally bankrupt characters on a show full of wrong ’uns. But as he crashes from bad decision to bad decision, barely blinking, Radia brings a subtlety to the character that has you not even just pitying Rishi, but actively rooting for him. For me, it’s the TV performance of the year.
Industry might drop on iPlayer as a boxset, but anybody who manages to binge-watch season three has a stronger stomach than me. That might not sound like a compliment, but it’s intended as one. Some TV shows are worth significantly raising your heart rate for: this is one of them.
‘Industry’ is streaming in full on BBC iPlayer