Thank goodness for this boxset. I don’t know when the BBC and HBO
got together for this co-funder, nor when they filmed it as there are plenty of
scenes involving people coming within fewer than two metres of each other, and
I don’t even really know when it was on or who told me about it (a manager said
I might like it and, as if unregistered at the time, I suddenly obeyed this
recommendation at an unconnected juncture a few weeks later). There’s no way of knowing any of these
things, least of all me checking for myself, but it doesn’t matter. The important thing is that I came across a
new show that gripped me and wouldn’t let me go until I had consumed every last
drop. And now I’m telling yous lot about
it: Industry. This is a big deal: I’m putting it up there
with Succession and Watchmen, even though a number of friends I’ve
insisted watch it aren’t quite convinced.
Firstly, it’s set in the world of work. And not just any old job. We’re talking finance. This means we get to look inside offices that
are full of people. As we end a year
spent mostly working alone in underpants, seeing desks and business attire and
strained professional relationships has taken on an almost pornographic quality. We’ll come back to the porn side later, as
there’s plenty of stimulation in the swish City of London office of Pierpoint
already. Some of these people have six
screens (including a Bloomberg
one, known affectionately as a Bloomie) and I couldn’t even count the phones:
there are headsets and then funny retro ones on coils hanging directly from the
desk with little switches on the back. It’s
all a feast for the eyes and this is before we even get onto the drama.
Pierpoint is a swanky fictional (sure) investment bank, long
the preserve of privileged white men and a hotbed of questionable financial
ethics and even more questionable employee behaviour. Our intro into this world is a new intake of
grads, hungry to earn those big money dollars straight out the gates of
university. But first, they must survive
the upcoming reduction in force (RIF) day to secure permanent contracts – pow,
we have tension right from the start.
Our grads’ chances are subject to numerous unfair factors, from the desk
they end up on, to their line manager’s temperament, their clients’ intentions,
their own backgrounds and whether they fit in with the vision of itself Pierpoint
is trying to create. It’s not life or
death (well…) but nobody is safe.
You might find yourself struggling with the lack of
likeability all the characters display. Our
main focus, Harper Stern, has proven challenging for many. She’s unpredictable, makes seemingly bad
choices that result in self-sabotage and can be unnecessarily unpleasant to those
around her. But she’s blazing a trail,
has ambition and won’t let her past overcome her. There’s doubt about her college credentials
from the off (as stuttered by a creepy HR man) and she’s a woman of colour in a
world not known for embracing diversity beyond tokenism. In fact, fellow grad Gus Sackey (not that she
is fond of him) seems endlessly amused by how little Pierpoint knows what to do
with him. More than once, his eyebrow is
askance at the drones around him.
Back to Harper, though, as we invariably always must go, and
her story arc sees her caught in office tension between her desk lead, Eric
Tao, and her line manager, Daria. Should
she align herself with the rogue trader who is a law unto himself or the
conscientious rising star, carefully plotting an ascendance that will coincide
with a redressing of Pierpoint’s gender balance and subsequent treatment of
women? Over on the FX desk, meanwhile,
we’ve got Yasmin, whose approach to ingratiating herself with the menfolk is to
go on constant coffee/salad/smoothie runs at the expense of proving her
investment chops. From an inordinately wealthy
background herself, she instead flexes female strength via humiliating and escalating
power play with Robert. Despite his
cocksure manner, he too suffers from the other Pierpointers’ snobbery when it
comes to his more working-class background. His dark suit is ridiculed, but he soon finds
a way in with the oldest-school Clement Cowan.
In time, the dysfunctionality of the grads only serves to
emphasise the more deeply ingrained dysfunctionality of their superiors,
eventually sucking everyone into a vortex of sexy skulduggery. Claims that the drama is far-fetched don’t
wash with me – if it’s someone’s real job to spend their days trading money
that’s so derivative it doesn’t exist via impenetrable jargon and their nights indulging
in excessive alcohol and drug consumption to entertain evil clients, then
surely it’s easy enough to buy the storylines of Industry. Having spent my first working year in
financial headhunting, it confirms the whole banking sector as a glorious near
miss for me.
Now, we wanted to circle back to porn, didn’t we? Hold tight, everyone, because Industry is
incredibly graphic. If sexual misconduct
is going down, then we really do see it all.
We see more or less all of our young leads too. This adds that Game
Of Thrones jeopardy of being surprised by a boob or willy at any point, lending
grittiness to a London that is already smeared with dirt as it is. Sure, we often end up seeing about twelve
more thrusts that we needed to in order to establish what’s afoot, and, if like
me, you get distracted whenever a line is snorted by wondering if it’s CGI or
if the actor really did woof some talcum powder, but it’s all part of the
fun. Who said work had to be
boring? You just have to work in the
right industry.
