'Industry' is the best series you're not watching, and season 3 is extraordinary
If the best genes of 'Succession' and 'Mad Men' came together to create the perfect series of this decade, it would be 'Industry'. No spoilers.
12 August, 2024 14:50Logan Roy might never have found a worthy successor for his empire, but HBO can be happy because Succession does have an heiress. Industry is the best series that many aren't watching. The most stimulating, modern, energetic, and addictive in the entire current TV landscape.
Industry is a perfect cocktail. Perhaps it would be better to define it as an intoxicating elixir, because the precision with which it combines its elements - always on the verge of boiling, bursting, running wild, overflowing... - must have something magical for it to work as it does.
It has the elegant drama and character development of series like Mad Men (one of the creators' favorites, Mickey Down and Konrad Kay), to which they pay obvious tributes like the reference "Shut the Door. Have a Seat." Or the ball pit fight in the third season, which I didn't have the chance to ask them about, but which immediately took me back to that pathetic fight between Pete Campbell and Lane Pryce.
That scene is a example of its playful sense of humor, something that all good dramas truly have. But the pillar on which its success rests is in its (well-written) complex, exasperating, contradictory characters and their unhealthy levels of dependence on work success.
The people who inhabit the Pierpoint universe are beings who, like Kendall Roy or Don Draper, have no life or sense outside of the work environment. Harper, Yasmin, Robert, Eric, and Rishi live 24 hours in a highly toxic environment that exists only in the gray leaning towards black.
Their relationships are always transactional, regardless of their nature. Also, the one they have with sex and drugs. They are not an escape, they are just fuel. There is no hedonism, only nihilism.
One of the distinguishing features of the series is the tension it generates, even though the characters are only watching how some stocks rise or plummet in real time on their screen. Speaking of this, allow me a parenthesis: do not let the impossible jargon intimidate you. If you are curious to understand financial concepts down to the last detail, go ahead, knowledge is power, but if not, do not worry. What is at stake emotionally, and whether a character wins or loses or if what happened is good or bad, is clear. Their anxiety will be yours.
This British production went unnoticed upon its release on HBO at the end of 2020, but now, with the signing of Kit Harington, such a fan of the series that he called HBO to offer himself for a role, it seems like the time for Industry to step out of its cult status and receive the recognition it deserves.
The first season was good, the second excellent, and the third is extraordinary. I have watched all eight episodes and I can tell you it is more ambitious in every sense, more splendid in its locations, and exudes a sense of security and confidence in itself.
If the best genes of Succession and Mad Men came together to create the perfect series of this decade, their Gen Z daughter, it would be Industry.
In this season, there are betrayals, revenge, deaths, confessions, crimes, murders, soap opera slaps, Lynchian nightmares, and an episode that could have been signed by Scorsese. Industry is Succession and Mad Men, but also You. It is the most entertaining and exciting series of today.
- Synopsis: A group of recent graduates in their twenties compete for a limited number of permanent positions in a top-tier investment bank in London. Boundaries blur as they delve into a corporate culture defined by sex, drugs, and egos.
- Where to watch it: Max
- Created by: Mickey Down and Konrad Kay
- Cast: Myha'la, Marisa Abela, David Jonsson, Harry Lawtey, Ken Leung, Sarah Parish, Jay Duplass, Kit Harington, Sarah Goldberg
*This article has been automatically translated using artificial intelligence