This dark London banking drama “No Succession” is heartless and bleak – The Irish Times

There is talk among television insiders that Industry (BBC One, Tuesday) is taking over as the new successor. On the surface, the parallels are quite striking. The BBC-HBO co-production chronicles the underhanded goings-on at a London investment bank full of evil people who treat each other vilely – a milieu once removed from that of Succession (in which the offspring of a New York media empire plotted each other’s downfall). .

Like Succession, Industry took its time finding its audience. Series one and two remained largely under the radar, but as the series crosses the Atlantic for a third season (after debuting on HBO in early August), there’s a feeling that a brutally dark and sometimes funny drama is about to have its moment . Ring the Wall Street bell, unleash the confetti – the binge-watch gods have blessed us again.

But is it as good as the talk would have you believe? The Succession was groundbreaking in that it forensically exposed the torments of the mega-rich – and made the rest of us feel better about being measly nerds. But in Industry, which follows a team of ethically bankrupt traders at the fictional firm Pierpoint and Co, the less original message is that high finance is a cesspool populated by overworked, overmedicated, oversexed monsters. The obvious answer is: tell us something we didn’t know.

If it’s similar in spirit to anything, it’s Game of Thrones – another celebration of medieval cruelty and arcane beliefs (belief in mystical gods vs. devotion to tooth-and-claw capitalism). The latest series even features Jon Snow himself, aka Kit Harington, as the head of a greenwashing clean energy company that is about to go public and has hired Pierpoint to handle the IPO.

The problem is that the Lumi company is grossly overvalued and Harington’s despicable Sir Henry Muck is determined to move as many shares as possible before the news gets out. That’s just one problem facing Pierpoint’s poor, rich daughter Yasmin Kara-Hanani (Marisa Abela, last seen as Amy Winehouse in “Back to Black”).

The other big thing on her mind is that her father, a publishing mogul, apparently ran away after an incident (details not yet known) on a yacht off the south of France. Haunted by the tabloids, haunted by the sight of her father in flagrante delicto below deck (the uproar that triggers his disappearance), everything comes to Yasmin, who fears that she wants to be fired.

Your concerns are legitimate. Her needy boss Eric (Ken Leung) has been warned that if he wants to remain as a partner at Pierpoint, he will need to display an enhanced capacity for cruelty. He flirts with taking out Yasmin, but instead fires Irishman Kenny (whom he derisively refers to as Wolfe Tone). The crime Kenny (Conor MacNeill) committed is kindness – when Eric’s wife kicked him out, it was Kenny who took Eric in. In Eric’s eyes, this is confirmation that Kenny is a nice guy – and in a bear pit like Pierpoint, he has to go.

The script by former investment bankers Mickey Down and Konrad Kay is written quickly, but everything is so heartless and dark. Even more than with succession, there is no one to root for. If only they could all lose. Watching these savage financiers rip each other’s throats out is a riveting blood sport – but beyond the acting viciousness, it’s unclear if there’s much else going on with Industry. The search for Succession’s successor continues.