I was a late adopter of the series Industry, neither enticed by the idea of parsing finance language nor entirely hooked by what felt like a generic title. But a late epiphany revealed the brilliance of the name—Industry is not a show about the finance world but about ambition and the system. Industry is about playing the game.
Set in the cut-throat world of finance, the show revolves around Harper Stern, Yasmin Kara-Hanani, and their ensemble of colleagues at Pierpoint & Co, who outdo the toxicity of their undeniably toxic workplace.
There are times when the jargon on the show seems to become too much for even the actors—the words they’re saying could mean truly anything, and in a way, that’s Shakespeare. The work is, as Severance's innies might call it, mysterious and important, although by the looks of it, Industry’s characters rarely turn into their outies. Everything is so damn serious and then you hear one of the most British phrases of your life—innit!
The series’ deft oscillation between finance and TikTok terminology exemplifies how this show straddles the new regime and the old… and how they may just be the same. Industry premiered in 2020, and as it has gone on, it has treated the toxicity of its workplace like a virus. Once infected, the toxin is not an old vestige but a cycle of toxicity that was set in motion from the first episode of the first season.
In the pilot episode, the group is inducted with a warning that by the end of their contract only half of them will be asked back. The season spans this contract while revealing the characters layer by layer. Banking prodigy Harper vies for power and recognition; the gilded nepo hire, Yasmin and Robert Spearing cope with the pressure through sex and excess; and Hari Dhar throws himself completely to the hustle that his employers don’t outright ask for but clearly expect—and dies because of it.
The show periodically deals with the fallout from Hari’s death. At the grad dinner in episode two, the group debates whether Andy Sach’s boyfriend in The Devil Wears Prada is justified in resenting her job as he watches her lose herself to it. Harper dismisses him outright: “Adrien Grenier is a grown ass man.” Eric Tao, Harper’s boss and the show’s most overtly toxic figure, embodies the same logic. Throughout the show, Eric’s aggression is discounted for his brilliance, and his recognition of Harper’s brilliance sets her down a similar self-erasing-devotion-to-work path. In the fifth episode, a former employee publishes an exposé about the company’s culture problem. Yasmin’s toxic boss, Kenny, dismisses it, saying it can’t actually be an exposé, that people here know what they’re getting into.
Season four, which premiered last month, moves our two leads, Harper and Yasmin, away from the business of eager Pierpoint bankers and into “bank killers”, each in their own way. The season purports to be about new beginnings; it even brings in Max Minghella for a co-founder ousting we haven’t seen since the likes of The Social Network (Succession tried, but Kendall Roy never quite succeeded).
What first feels like reinvention begins to look like reincarnation. As the episodes go by, the sheen wears off and it becomes apparent that they both deny every opportunity they have to change the culture, knowingly taking the risks that lead to Hari’s death.
Yasmin’s relationship with power shifts over the series. She begins at the bottom, getting lunch orders, and later resents her underling who won’t do the same. In season one, she stays silent after an assault to protect her job, but in season two, when the same underling reports an assault to her, she dismisses it. Not because she doubts it but because the subordinate refuses to use it as a bargaining chip she once had to. In the final episode of season three, Yasmin negotiates the biggest trade of her life by getting engaged to Henry Muck for stability, protection from scandal, and financial security rather than love.
Their disastrous first months as newlyweds, however, wear on Yasmin. A woman of her talents, sacrificing her agency in the name of power, realises that the passenger seat of a car whose engine is off has no power at all.
At the start of the fourth season, she is somewhat of a shepherd who slowly becomes a restless puppeteer. By the morning after Henry’s birthday, Yasmin has put enough balls in motion to secure him a position as CEO of Tender, and an episode later, a title and office for herself too.
She also engineers a sexual encounter between her husband and executive assistant Hayley, alongside Hayley’s promotion, seeing her as an ally. Hayley thanks her and also indicates that this is the first of many favours Yasmin will do her. Although higher up in the food chain, Yasmin is still dealing in the currency that has bankrupted her before.
Harper, on the other hand, brings a strap-on to a knife fight, with the launch of a short-focused hedge fund with her old mentor, Eric. She translates her gifts as a trader and hunger for risk into betting on the failure of businesses, the prime target of which is the company where Yasmin and her husband are investors and executives. “Short-only work is anti-status-quo, anti-establishment, anti-power,” Eric warns her. But we know how Harper responds to warnings: “What part of that is meant to be a problem for us?”
