{"id":448436,"date":"2026-02-27T11:54:08","date_gmt":"2026-02-27T11:54:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/448436\/"},"modified":"2026-02-27T11:54:08","modified_gmt":"2026-02-27T11:54:08","slug":"growing-pains-industry-has-shown-that-bigger-isnt-always-better-television","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/448436\/","title":{"rendered":"Growing pains: Industry has shown that bigger isn\u2019t always better | Television"},"content":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s a lot of talk about growth on Industry, the hit HBO\/BBC drama<\/a> concerning the ruthless world of London finance. Characters wax poetic and soothingly incoherent (to the layperson) about stocks and shorts, asset values and private funds. Charismatic entrepreneurs peddle the latest groundbreaking green energy company or democratized bank or, to quote one particularly foul-mouthed character in a show full of scoundrels, \u201cthe Paypal of bukkake\u201d. All espouse and consecrate the profit motive.<\/p>\n

Naturally, there\u2019s a lot of hot air; in the show\u2019s caustic nexus of business, politics and global media \u2013 not so much a fun-house mirror as a high-budget, impressionistic rendering of five minutes scrolling X \u2013 your worth is not in dollars or pounds but in narrative confidence. \u201cWe don\u2019t need proof,\u201d says one short-seller out for the kill, \u201cbecause we finally have a good story to tell\u201d. Cooked books can be explained as \u201csimply a misalignment between the velocity of my vision and the velocity of regulation\u201d, according to the slippery fintech entrepreneur Whitney Halberstram, played with reptilian cool by Max Minghella, in the fourth season\u2019s most recent episode. The gap in between is \u201cwhere smart people have always made money\u201d.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s also where Industry, co-created, written and largely directed by former financiers Konrad Kay and Mickey Down, finds itself in its frustrating fourth season, an improbable hit which nervily shed its former governing structure in favor of unruly and ambitious growth. Improbable, in that for years, the show was a hidden jewel on HBO, second-class in popularity though beloved by its niche audience; I got hooked on season one\u2019s verit\u00e9 depiction of a cutthroat recent graduate program at a fictional London investment bank and have been hawking it like a Pierpoint & Co day trader ever since, bullish on its pleasurable soundbath<\/a> of financial argot and distinct portrait of late-millennial workism.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Unlikely, too, in that Kay and Down essentially torched their show\u2019s conceit in the third season, betting hard-earned cult loyalty on voracious audience appetite. Pierpoint shut down, for reasons I can barely begin to understand (financial acumen has, blessedly, never been the point), thus stripping the show of its beloved central setting. Formerly unknown ensemble stars such as David Jonsson and Harry Lawtey departed, while new regulars like Kit Harington, playing Sir Henry Muck, a well-meaning but catastrophically entitled aristocrat-cum-entrepreneur, were upgraded to series regulars, thus inverting the show\u2019s signature bottom-up perspective \u2013 a portrait of the mega-wealthy painted by the striving junior employees \u2013 back toward the top. To flesh out their cross-section of wealth and power in the UK, Kay and Down hired alums of bigger shows like Mad Men (Kiernan Shipka, playing a shifty executive assistant) and Stranger Things (Charlie Heaton, as an aggravatingly unethical journalist).<\/p>\n

As a longtime fan, I greeted this expansion with wariness. The third season finale, which swanned about Muck\u2019s Downton Abbey-esque estate and saw its central frenemies \u2013 Myha\u2019la\u2019s sharkish investor Harper Stern, and Marisa Abela\u2019s equally Machiavellian heiress Yasmin Kara-Hanani \u2013 sell their remaining shreds of humanity for a windfall (a billionaire fund and aristocratic marriage, respectively), treaded dangerously close to pure provocation and a deadening fixation on the ultra-rich. Industry has never lacked for industry-best performances, but the velocity of the vision seemed to far outpace Kay and Down\u2019s ability to ground it. Faced with an Emerald Fennell-like privileging of vibes over anything so coherent as character, I missed the contained but no less baroque power games of the trading floor, the relatively quotidian but no less consequential compromises of giving one\u2019s youth to a plutocratic institution. The capitalist mantra of \u201cgrow or die\u201d seemed like an unfortunate mantle to take on.<\/p>\n

But take on they did. The fourth season is, perhaps just like the global financial elite, an often groundless fever dream of excess, wealth and technocratic bluster. Yas and Harper, long graduated from demeaning coffee runs for the trading floor, are comfortably ensconced in the halls of power and sparring with a ludicrous Russian doll of big bads up to and including the Russians themselves. (It\u2019s as vague as described.) Sex, drugs and power games have always been a part of Industry\u2019s DNA \u2013 the first three seasons near singlehandedly rejuvenated kink on TV<\/a> \u2013 but the dalliances this season have more than a whiff of self-satisfaction, as if delighting in HBO\u2019s limits on pure provocation; adrift in a sea of extremity, a mid-season threesome between Yas, Henry and Hayley merely shocks, without titillating surprise.<\/p>\n

Hallmarks of the old show remain, namely the sparkling frenmity between Yas and Harper, and the fascinatingly inarticulable bond<\/a> between Harper and her mentor Eric Tao (Ken Leung), a thorny, platonic soulmate-ship in the TV hall of fame with Mad Men\u2019s Don Draper and Peggy Olson. At least once an episode, such as when Eric finally vocalized filial pride in Harper while also professionally breaking up with her, I was pierced by the show\u2019s trademark arrow of sublime stress, and slid from my couch to the floor. But on the sprawling whole, from the halls of Parliament to private jets to shell companies in Accra, the show\u2019s formerly meticulous stakes have never been more inferior to its vibe of depraved, sweaty chaos and pervasive doom. Watching it was never un-stimulating, often entertaining and totally exhausting. It felt, I suppose, like being alive in 2026.<\/p>\n

Ken Leung and Myha\u2019la in Industry Photograph: HBO<\/p>\n

Perhaps that\u2019s why it\u2019s never been more popular. The fourth season, which concludes on Sunday, is by far its most acclaimed<\/a>, averaging 1.7m viewers per episode \u2013 not Game of Thrones numbers, but well within hit range \u2013 and earning it a fifth and final season<\/a>. Viewers have responded positively to both Industry\u2019s narrative of elite bluster and infectious amorality, as well as to its meta-narrative of ambition: a formerly underestimated cult favorite, now with the ambition and resources to be, more or less, the new Succession, HBO former crown jewel of mega-wealth tragedy.<\/p>\n

The comparison is obvious, and inevitably overdone, though still apt: if Succession was, as I argued<\/a>, the defining show of the first Trump presidency \u2013 a brilliantly warped mirror of our toxic cartoon times \u2013 then Industry feels true to the second, when everything got somehow worse. Kay and Down are too savvy to entangle with US politics \u2013 Eric waving to a distant, red-hatted man on a luxe golf course in the premiere is plenty \u2013 and dabble just enough in the UK\u2019s, basing a regulatory plotline on the 2024 Labour sweep. But its pitch-black view of power, its operating logic of unrelenting self-interest and its sacrifice of specificity and continuity for spectacle and scale, feel very of the moment. I\u2019m still not sure how much I mean that as a compliment.<\/p>\n

The final scene of the penultimate episode, at least, finds us back in familiar territory: Harper and Yasmin at a bar, together. Over four seasons, their dynamic has been at turns venomous, tender, codependent and above all covetous. They are a world away from the program evaluations, sexual harassment and shared men of season one. They have so thoroughly betrayed each other, so many times, that rapprochement should be impossible; nevertheless, they\u2019re all each other has. Still the one person with whom they can be truly honest, just now against a backdrop of international scandal, financial collapse and possible ruin. \u201cHow the fuck did we get here?\u201d Yasmin says wistfully. For a second maybe she, too, wishes to go back.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There\u2019s a lot of talk about growth on Industry, the hit HBO\/BBC drama concerning the ruthless world of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":448437,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[96,391,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-448436","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-tv","tag-entertainment","tag-tv","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448436","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=448436"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/448436\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/448437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=448436"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=448436"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=448436"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}