Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Industry’ On HBO, About Five College Grads Trying To Make It With London’s Biggest Investment Bank

During the era of COVID, do we want to see pretty people making rich people richer? That’s what HBO is going to find out with Industry, about five college grads trying to make it at a prestigious London investment bank. Can these relative kids handle the pressure to succeed, and how will they live their lives while doing it?

INDUSTRY: STREAM IT OR SKIP IT?

Opening Shot: A young woman is in a job interview and all we hear is “blah blah blah”.

The Gist: The woman being interviewed is Harper Stern (Myha’la Herrold), looking for a tryout with Pierpoint & Co., one of London’s largest investment banks. Her potential boss, Eric (Ken Leung), really likes Harper’s desire to be judged on her performance and dislike of how mediocre people her age can be.

Others are seen being interviewed as well, and we end up seeing a group of five college grads who are part of Pierpoint’s training program, in which half the people who get hired for it will wash out of before it’s over. There’s the supremely confident Gus (David Jonsson), a researcher who doesn’t break a sweat because he knows he’s good enough; Hari (Nabhaan Rizwan), who sits next to Gus and feels is so behind the eight-ball that he pulls all-nighters fueled by various stimulants; Yasmin (Marisa Abela), who gets so little respect that we constantly see her fetching lunch and coffee for her team instead of learning her job; and Robert (Harry Lawtey), who parties hard, takes few chances at work, and is constantly insulted by the people who hire him.

Everyone has their own demons to deal with. Harper got the job despite the fact that it seems like she made up tiny things on her resume, like the fact that she never went to SUNY-Binghamton, so she has to do some FaceTime sex with a friend in order for him to forge a transcript. She’s invited to a client dinner by her line manager, and she pitches a risky investment to the client, who then proceeds to drunkenly feel her up on the car ride home. Robert tries to cover up his partying ways but can’t. And the one night Hari is told to step away from the office because his all-nighters are raising red flags, he gets super drunk and still tries to go back to the office; he passes out in Harper’s room instead.

After tragedy strikes at the office, the new crop has to reassess what they’re doing at Pierpoint, whether they want to continue, and whether they need to change things up.

What Shows Will It Remind You Of? This feels like a junior edition of Billions, or The Wolf of Wall Street transported to 2020 London.

Our Take: Created by Mickey Down and Konrad Kay — Lena Dunham directed the first episode — Industry feels like, on first blush, a show that we absolutely wanted to hate with a burning passion. Not only does it feel like the wrong show at the wrong time — who wants to see douchebags operating in an investment bank these days? — but none of the characters feel like ones we care about. But yet… there were elements that were interesting enough to make us want to keep watching, but only if those elements are what the show focuses on going forward.

The two women in this group of five, Harper and Yasmin, are the ones we hope Down and Kay decide to concentrate on, only because seeing these young women struggle to make it in such an aggro, brotastic work environment is Industry‘s most fascinating aspect. In the first episode, we’ve already seen the hills Harper had to climb just to get to where she was, including fending off advances from an influential female client. And Yasmin’s plight, where the members of her group treat her like a secretary instead of an equal, screams for an episode where she either stands up for herself or has to deal with some workplace harassment that is beyond the pale.

The rest of it just makes us shrug our shoulders. We don’t need the jargon-y dialogue about various investment deals. We don’t care much about party-dudes like Robert or smug jerks like Gus. We’ve seen characters like these too many times to really care. That’s why we wish the show became more about the breaking of gender stereotypes in the finance industry, but we’re not holding out much hope that it goes in that direction.

Sex and Skin: Besides Harper’s FaceTime masturbation session, we also see Robert having sex with a woman in a bathroom at a club.

Parting Shot: Harper celebrates her first sale by getting a suite at a fancy hotel. We see her taking a selfie of her eating a room service burger against the London skyline outside her window, then the next morning she sipped coffee as she looked out the same window.

Sleeper Star: We hope Marisa Abela gets more screen time as the seemingly hapless Yasmin. When she allowed a fellow young’un to trash Harper as they talked in the bathroom, when she saw Harper come out of a stall, she apologetically said, “I was the less cunty one.”

Most Pilot-y Line: After Harper’s sale, Eric congratulates her, then goes, “What’s with the ring in your nose? Are you cattle?”

Our Call: STREAM IT. As much as we think that there’s something redeeming in the first episode of Industry, we just don’t have faith that the show will go down the more intelligent path. Even so, there’s enough there to keep watching.

Joel Keller (@joelkeller) writes about food, entertainment, parenting and tech, but he doesn’t kid himself: he’s a TV junkie. His writing has appeared in the New York Times, Slate, Salon, RollingStone.com, VanityFair.com, Fast Company and elsewhere.

Stream Industry On HBO Max