‘Industry’ Season 3 Review: Prestige Television Is Back, Baby

• BH’s official spoiler-free Industry season 3 review.
• We recently sat down with the cast & crew — including Game of Thrones alum Kit Harrington — for a conversation about the forthcoming episodes.
• Release date: August 11th via HBO/Max (international) & August 12th via Binge/Foxtel/Foxtel GO (Australia).

An unfortunate consequence of the streaming era is that these days, television often no longer feels like television. It feels like content. Clumsily heaped onto a plate, pre-chewed for the lowest common denominator, and at times, transparently choreographed in a desperate bid for the increasingly competitive attention economy.

Having previewed the entirety of Industry season 3, I can confidently say the cult hit HBO finance drama’s latest instalment does not feel like television. But nor is it guilty of the aforementioned sin (you can breathe out now).

Instead, it wonderfully straddles whatever taxonomical fence divides a saucy Wall Street Journal exposé and full-blown cinema; almost every episode feels like its own feature-length film in both scale and pathos. Particularly a standout chapter centred on acerbic fan favourite Rishi Ramdani (Sagar Radia) that clearly drew inspiration from the Safdie Brothers. Uncut Trader, anyone?

Where most peddle empty claims about “upping the ante,” “all-new stakes,” and being “bigger/better,” in their third season as ex-bankers-turned-showrunners, series co-creators Konrad Kay and Mickey Down have actually put their money where their mouths are with something of a departure from the first two seasons.

In the best possible way.

“Season 1 was more of a vibe than a serious TV show. More of a feeling that we were trying to get across, carried along by the music and the acting. And we felt like our writing needed to catch up to the standard of HBO,” Konrad Kay told BH.

“If you were put off by how hermetically sealed the first season was and how inaccessible it was because it was about finance and it was basically in a foreign language, then you could come to season 3 having never seen the show, and be like, ‘Well, I like the mystery at the centre of it, and I like the fact that they’re writing about newspapers because I understand them and I understand what an IPO is.’”

However, that isn’t to say Industry has forgone its original appeal, i.e. a brutally authentic rendering of the trading floor textured by lived experience — borderline alienating jargon and all — brought to life with deliciously nuanced onscreen performances. You can even expect a welcome touch more of genuine comedy that isn’t merely at a character’s expense. To quote Mr Kay…

“The show’s denser in season 3, but in a way that is also lighter and more enjoyable and more accessible to a broader audience.”

Industry season 3 drops the audience back into the world of Pierpoint & Co London as the elite investment bank looks to the future and takes a misguided bet on so-called “ethical investing.” In signature fashion, the overarching story ruthlessly takes a scalpel to the upper echelons of finance, media, politics, the British ruling class, as well as our nauseatingly modern culture.

Without giving too much away, among everything in Konrad Kay and Mickey Down’s iron sights this season, corporate virtue signalling takes its lumps most prolifically.

Career nepo baby Yasmin Kara-Hanani (Marisa Abela), adult lost boy Robert Spearing (Harry Lawtey), and Machiavellian managing director Eric Tao (Ken Leung) find themselves entangled with the splashy IPO of Lumi — a WeWork meets Theranos-esque green tech energy company led by blue-blooded egomaniac Henry Muck (Kit Harington).

“I’m not from the same background as him. I wasn’t privately educated, and I didn’t go to an elite public school, but weirdly — and I’ll say it because it’s on Wikipedia — my dad’s a baronet,” said Kit Harrington, who revealed he was a fan of Industry long before he came aboard.

“So I kind of know that world, but don’t know that world. I sort of knew him in my background somewhere. And he wasn’t so far from me in some ways, but very far in others… I just knew so many Henrys in my time. I’ve met so many or felt like I’d met so many of them.”

Henry Muck serves as equal parts a critique of the archetype, comic relief, and an emotional soundboard for our collective pity. One that could’ve only been pulled off by a thespian with a deft touch. Make no mistake: Harrington’s casting wasn’t a novelty or marketing stunt. Ironically enough considering the context of who he portrays, this was meritocracy at work.

“The character feels very prevalent in the burgeoning tech start-up culture — a kind of super entitled, super well-educated tech founder, who has never really had to deal with any issues in his life before,” added Mickey Down.

“Has never had to deal with any failure, has had the world handed to him. Buttressed by privilege the entire time and basically treats his life, like Robert Spearing says: everything’s an MBA.”

“If he succeeds, that’s excellent. He’ll take all the credit. If he fails, it’s gonna be someone else’s issue.”

Down continued: “Kit brought so much humanity, he brought so much charm to it to a character who is — in some respects on paper — quite charmless. And that’s because Kit is a phenomenal actor.”

Meanwhile, Abela’s Yasmin grapples with her reprehensible gadabout father Charles’ (Adam Levy) embezzlement scandal, which proves to be the tip of a far more sinister iceberg. Side note: we anticipate this entire subplot may strike you as the most challenging for a myriad of reasons. Still, it’s all woodfire for the intrigue furnace in our books.

The since ousted “human wrecking ball” Harper Stern (Myha’la), on the other hand, allies herself with an unlikely partner in FutureDawn portfolio manager Petra Koenig (Sarah Goldberg). And in an amusing turn of the table, she’s no longer the destructive element. Perhaps the real issue all along wasn’t so much the college dropout as it was the toxic environment.

“Somebody said it, finally!” exclaimed Myha’la when I prompted her about this interpretation.

“She’s learned by example. She’s just doing a really good job at it. That’s their bad, they created a monster.”

“I think unconsciously, he kind of views her as a daughter because the way he deals with her, especially in this season,” mused Ken Leung, the man behind Eric Tao.

“We sense that type of ownership that he assumes with her that is totally inappropriate. But it would make sense if you take the lens of a father who’s like, ‘I’ve given up all this. I’ve done all this for you and this is how you treat me?'”

“It’s beyond business, it’s deeper than business.”

While there are certainly moments where you get the sense Industry season 3 is groaning under the weight of its own Hollywood-scale ambition, plodding through the soap-like motions — and it’d be remiss of us to ignore how gratuitous the show’s approach to sex continues to be (enough with the cumshots, already) — ultimately, this is a gamble that’s paid off in wildly entertaining spades.

If it were possible, we’d buy puts on what may no longer be HBO’s “best-kept secret.” But we’ll settle for simply being a passenger on the other side of the screen as it moons.

Industry season 3 premieres on August 11th via HBO/Max (international) and August 12th via Binge/Foxtel/Foxtel GO (Australia).

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Read our full-length feature interview with the cast & crew of HBO’s Industry season 3 in Vol. 2 of B.H. Magazine (available from October 2024).