What Industry does so perfectly is translate the business model of Pierpoint, the investment bank where most of the action is set, into an ideology that affects all the relationships between the characters. It functions like a virus, like an infection. A predatory model of money-making at all costs, only very loosely constrained by laws which are frequently presented as obstacles to be overcome rather than red lines, turns every relationship into a quest for power. Information is essential, especially in a place where power if distributed so unevenly (from the start, the new associates are told that they are competing against each other for a few permanent spots), and so mining for information becomes the primary occupation of especially Harper (a truly outstanding Myha'la Herrold), who is already disadvantaged as an American in a British bank who has forged her educational credentials, competing against associates who have graduated from prestigious universities and come from highly networked, rich families. Much of the show contrasts Harper's struggle, which has turned her into a shark, with Yasmin's (Marisa Abela, who shines in the third season especially) privileged background: they are sometimes friends, sometimes feuding, a this question of whether true friendship is even possible in the environment is maybe the driving emotional force behind most of the show. Yasmin accuses Harper of being incapable of genuine feelings, Harper accuses Yasmin of being unaware of her privilege, and riding on someone else's coat tails, being spoon-fed the kind of access that Harper has always had to fight for. The third main character for most of the show (others come in and out) is Robert (Harry Lawtey), an Oxford graduate from a working class background. Robert is used on the show to explore how rigid the British class structure is, how not even going to a lauded university truly changes his odds against other competitors who grew up in rich families, or have the money to dress the right way, or haven't had to teach themselves to talk a certain way to be taken seriously. Where Harper and Yasmin's relationship asks questions of the possibility of friendship, Robert begins a complex (and disturbing) psychosexual relationship with Yasmin, who wildly oscillates between her deep insecurity at work and obsession with power in her personal relationship with him - and instead of going the more trite route of interpreting Yasmin's power of him as some kind of feminist attainment, the show instead portrays their whole dance as damaging to them both, with Yasmin immediately turning anything that feels like love and care into something "ugly" (she verbalises this to him in the final episode of the third season), and Robert unable to cut himself free because he's fallen in love.
I'm fascinated by where everyone ends up at the end of the third season: Harper, who was fired from Pierpoint because her mentor Eric, who recognises himself in her but doesn't like losing control of his assets, gets rid of her (her forged credentials hang over her like an anvil throughout the first season), leaves a seemingly functional work environment built on mutual trust and shared decision making that is ill-suited to her worst instincts. She instead wants to use corporate espionage and forensic accounting to build a fund that specialises in shorting over-valued companies ("it's only criminal if we get caught" is a perfect summation of her approach to this business), utilising the money of a shady financier who is as contemptuous of laws and boundaries as she is. Harper is presented as an opportunistic character, who takes the credo of the financial industry she works in the most serious: anything is allowed as long as it makes money. This is undercut by the fact that she mixes in a solid dose of vengeance for past transgressions, as most of her decisions in the third season are driven by trying to get back at people she feels have wronged her (a move for which Eric appears to respect her enough to give her a quote for her appearance in the Forbes' 30 under 30 list). This approach gets a literal body count when she throws Rishi, a fellow Pierpoint trader, under the bus. Rishi is a different kind of personification of what happens when an industry appears to reward risk-taking and gambling with few constraints attached: he's fallen into deep gambling debts due to his addiction to risk, and his inability to pay them leads to the most shocking scene of the show so far, when the man he owes money to shoots his wife.
Yasmin, the focus point of the third season, ends up maintaining the privileges of her upbringing which she was about to lose due to legal action against her father by marrying a member of the aristocracy (Kit Harington doing great work with Henry Muck, in a world he seems to know well). Torn between what Robert has to offer, a kind of quaint normal life (Industry shows him buying a scratchy ticket, an action that Yasmin observes with a mix of deep fascination and abhorrence, a mix that describes her relationship to him well), and the safe and secure mantle of protection that moneyed power (not just that of the aristocracy, but also the protection of a yellow paper owner, uncle to Henry) could extend to her should she marry into it. Yasmin's father has been revealed to a be a serial abuser of children and women, and hinted to have abused Yasmin as well, even though the show never goes so far as to definitively confirm it (there are many transgressions, and deeply gross moments between them), instead offering it as a possible explanation for Yasmin's trauma response. Robert gets left behind but is likely better off for it, jumping ship at Pierpoint to become a money guy for a psychedelics start-up (the show's most obvious reference to Mad Men is his sales pitch - earlier in the season, an Ayahuasca trip is presented as mind-changing and beautiful, but the characters experiencing it immediately turn to ways to turn a profit from it) just before Pierpoint implodes. There's a continuing sense here that the only escape hatch from the abyss is to leave permanently, not just Pierpoint but the show altogether (like Gus, played by David Jonsson, who hasn't been seen since leaving for the US).
All of this is very compelling, and brilliant: especially when traumatic pasts are translated into deeply troubled relationships, when characters feel like they are searching for something genuine beyond the constraints, but can't quite get there, because they are primed to seek some kind of advantage in every interaction.
2020-, created by Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, starring Marisa Abela, Myha'la Herrold, Harry Lawtey, Ken Leung, David Jonsson, Freya Mavor, Conor MacNeill.