Industry is Succession meets Euphoria running into the Uncut Gems soundtrack where they all have a have ketamine-inspired orgy in a bathroom stall at a rave.
This show shouldn’t work. It’s all of the boring parts of The Wolf of Wall Street and The Big Short— you know, coked-out finance-boy spitting capitalistic jargon all over himself and everybody in his general vicinity— shoved in your face through a British lens. It relies entirely on the backs of young actors with little-to-no experience or formidable backgrounds and a premise that is more equatable to a reality show than a television series.
It can essentially be summarized in one sentence, “Young competitive people slowly kill themselves for money and pride,” and yet it’s one of the most enticing shows I’ve seen in the last 24 months. In a world where survival of the fittest is a moral distinction as well as an incessant reality, Industry breaks the backs of its characters one at a time. It features a breakout role from the series lead, Harper Stern (Myha’la Herrold), who is a young Black woman with dreadlocks, a nose ring, and an anonymous background that has the wit and desire to scale the corporate ranks one shaky step at a time despite her innate mystique. Harper is clearly the character’s avatar and therefore must be our primary concentration, but the supporting characters are equally as attractive to me as a viewer.
This is the modern show that the world needs right now amidst this pandemic. It’s a reintroduction into the most hectic of office spaces imaginable while also being an escape into neon-lit nightclubs with an EDM blare polluted by incoherent babbling. HBO has made it their top priority to become a forward-thinking, futuristic company over the last couple years. The production of their new landmark show Euphoria coexists with the reality that the Home Box Office has focused their transition into streaming with HBO Max. Industry wouldn’t exist without the streaming boom and Euphoria, and although I’m not necessarily a fan of the latter, I’m thankful for it because it’s allowed other creators to dive into a similar reality with a more realistic engine.
New episodes come out Monday nights on HBO and HBO Max.
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