MUST WATCH: HBO’S ‘INDUSTRY’
A fascinating and raw trip into the dark underbelly of London's high finance/hedge fund ecosystem.
‘Billions’ is basically cheeseball-y and naively woke. ‘Succession’ is cool, well-written and edgy, but also over-stylized and hyperbolic. HBO’s ‘Industry’, however – now in its third season – is a spark plug psycho drama with mega mojo and a masterful dialogue.
The story comports with the day to day reality of what can easily be observed on global Wall Street. In a super intense and suspenseful narrative, the show explores fast AF money and capitalism in all its risk-on greed and fear while chronicling the complex lives of young traders, their mentors, and industry archetypes/stereotypes.
'Industry'’s clever co-creators, Mickey Down and Konrad Kay (ex bankers, of course), worked hard to encapsulate the cut-throat spirit of The City (London’s version of Wall Street), including the troubled personalities and twisted psyches of its characters, the prickly culture, and the routine stresses and storms of speculative finance.
The firm at the center of the storm, Pierpoint (a sort of imaginary synthesis of Goldman Sachs meets AQR), takes a massive punt on ESG to generate short-term profits, knowing full well that ‘going green’ is a wacky fad and ideological fantasy. Pierpoint, now on the ropes, incubates and underwrites a sketchy alt energy start-up called ‘Lumi’, and sets the stage for an epic IPO.
On the morning of the critical listing, the power/electricity unexpectedly goes off inside the exchange, torpedoing the first trade while exposing the absurdity/hypocrisy of ‘woke investing’ (‘Lumi’ provides the electricity in the stock exchange). It must also expose Pierpoint's crappy and incomplete due diligence. Chaos must ensue…but then the episode ends abruptly. It’s all brilliantly suspenseful and wildly dramatic.
We f^*king love this show even though it’s a little hard for non-finance people to wrap their noggins around the strange argot/exigencies of Pierpoint’s sell-side trading desk. But you start to grasp and appreciate things like short-selling, CDOs, inverse variance swaps, and other esoteric finance concepts because they actually play a direct role in your (economic) life, like it or not.
Beautifully cinematic with scenes that burn with theatrical energy, ‘Industry’ is an interesting, super-realistic and well-paced show for those who are keen to watch and learn about Wall Street’s hall of mirrors financialization.
Who’s in the lineup this season? The shows regulars will be returning — namely, Harper (Myha’la Herrold), Robert (Harry Lawtey), Yasmin (Marisa Abela), and Eric (Ken Leung) — with the addition of Kit Harington, who will be fresh from his run in Jeremy O. Harris’s ‘Slave Play’, which opens in the West End this summer. Harington will be playing the comically named Henry Muck, the starry-eyed boss of green tech energy firm ‘Lumi.’ Notable others include: Miriam Petche as Sweetpea Golightly, Andrew Cavill as Lord Norton, Roger Barclay as Otto Mostyn, Fady Elsayed as Ali El Mansour, and Fiona Button as Denise Oldroyd.
Go binge watch ‘Industry’ asap. Watch the trailer here:
