Industry Season 3 Review – TV’s Wildest Drama Is More Exciting Than Ever | television and radio

Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, the creators and writers of Industry, find themselves in a rare, dangerous and blessed position. Her show about young Londoners working at the brutal end of the financial sector is an entry-level hit. More and more people have learned to speak its unique language, and now, with the arrival of season three, Industry has its say. The headlight is on.

Luckily, the comeback episodes suggest that this is the moment Down and Kay have been planning all along. The industry is coming back with the pedal to the metal, with all the things that make it great intensified and sharpened. It’s more urgent than ever to google it.

The main characters now live together in a beautiful, fancy townhouse that they never get to enjoy because everyone is always in the middle of a work crisis – it’s like This Life without the cozy domesticity. At the top of the stress rankings is Yas (Marisa Abela), the heiress whose investment banking career cannot escape the shadow of her corrupt plutocrat father. As she arrives on the Pierpoint trading floor on a crucial day, her annoying colleague’s screen flashes a story about Yas’ family in MailOnline’s sidebar of shame.

Today is important because tomorrow marks the IPO of Lumi, a green energy startup from the unique mind of the great Henry Muck (Kit Harington) – his last name represents the kind of privilege that gives people the confidence to play around with billions of pounds and a letter that differs from the ultimate real-world example of the kind of pseudo-visionary that modern high finance inexplicably worships.

“I find that I sleep more deeply under my desk,” says Muck during an interview with the unimpressed Amol Rajan (playing himself), in which Muck tries to come across as a relaxed entertainer. “That was my humor. We can cut that off, it didn’t really land.”

A rich man’s vain pursuit of being funny and likeable is one of a thousand contemporary observations. The industry is doing it exactly right, but for Pierpoint’s young people, convincing the market that Lumi isn’t a basket case is serious business. Eric (Ken Leung), the boss of Yas and sensitive working-class conscience in the series Rob (Harry Lawtey), must protect his new leadership role, a dictate from above to downsize his team by firing someone, and inflate a dodgy stock price .

These are the necessary conditions for chaos, and the industry is not shying away. Whether it’s a sudden death or a spontaneous evening of cocaine-soaked confessions in a half-dressed lawyer’s office, big events that could have been saved for a season finale are left out in the first episode, at the end of which everything is on fire.

But none of this feels unnecessary: ​​the show deals with the absurdity of people playing a high-stakes game. It’s impossible to understand because somewhere, someone who has more money than you is constantly changing the rules. This is what has historically made the industry temporarily inaccessible to new entrants. However, now everything is clear, especially the fact that when you zoom in closely, personal relationships and individual weaknesses matter. With everyone navigating a complex web of secrets and hidden alliances, a phone call here or a well-handled argument there can mean the difference between professional life and death. Eric’s final decision about who to fire is unpredictable until it becomes inevitable.

In the meantime, Industry continues to fine-tune the details and massive narrative impulses. The scene where Yas is called into a meeting with Muck and finds the supposedly unconventional green innovator shirtless in the five-a-side of a gentlemen’s club in Piccadilly is utterly hilarious – but by the end of the second episode, Yas encounters the toxic men in her life has become extremely shocking.

Lifting the veil on the whims of the super-rich is one way Industry is a post-succession show; Another, lighter pleasure the two series have in common is their mastery of cultural flotsam and the way people interact in the digital age. We meet Harper (Myha’la) again at her desk in her new dogbody job at an ethical investment firm – you have to press pause to read the text message she just received (“My Mubi account is about to expire and we’re still here”) I haven’t seen “Decision to Leave” yet – thoughts?”) and seeing her respond with a photo of herself with her hand in her panties.

That’s pretty mild by industry standards, but it’s earned the right to be the wildest drama on TV and it’s not passing up the opportunity. “My cortisol level!” says Anna’s boss as her position with Lumi turns to ash. “I constantly feel like there is an active shooter in the building.” The industry thrives on this danger.