INDUSTRY: Somehow Familiar, and Not So Meaningless After All

Youth, beauty, and wealth – did these three ingredients, mixed together and so often used in pop culture, result in the case of Industry in the creation of a work worth tasting, imitating, and recommending?

The production was born out of the collaboration between BBC and HBO and belongs to the kind that are known from beginning to end before one even sits down to watch the first episode. The description alone – young people working in a bank and fighting for a place for themselves in the world of financial sharks – is enough to vividly imagine the events presented throughout the entire season.

What viewers should stereotypically associate with white-collar workers employed in a London bank located in a glass skyscraper is indeed presented in a series of successive scenes showing the duplicity of people and the ruthlessness of the corporate system. Industry consists of typical representatives of a generation just entering adulthood: Yasmin (Marisa Abela), who comes from a wealthy family; Harper (My’hala Herrold), talented yet constantly scheming; Gus (David Jonsson), well-prepared in terms of knowledge and extremely ambitious; and Robert (Harry Lawtey), the proletarian nouveau riche who is always partying.

All of them graduated, or at least so they declare, from prestigious universities, and now they are entering a new environment where not only acquired knowledge matters, but also interpersonal skills, especially those related to acquiring new clients. As is the case with this type of production, although the plot is tied to the financial sector, the information presented about it is not treated seriously by the creators.

In other words, even though the audience mostly watches the protagonists at work, the details provided about it are merely fillers for dialogue rather than important elements deepening knowledge about the community in question.

The young characters and their supervisors use vocabulary connected to banking, currency trading, and stock market transactions, but what matters much more are their struggles on the interpersonal stage, where the greatest weapons are jealousy, ambition, and lust for power.

It is no surprise that in Industry the corporation and its employees are shown as a gilded cage in which the lowest human instincts come to the surface, especially when larger and larger sums of money are at stake.

New numbers on bank accounts act like aphrodisiacs, sometimes even better than naked pictures and sexual innuendos.

It is noteworthy how often in the BBC series sex occurs, though it is not always consummated. Incidentally, in such moments The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie comes to mind, where the characters were unable to consume food.

Meanwhile, in the British production most people are guided by sexual impulses, though often just before the act something prevents them from reaching fulfillment.

And when the act does manage to be successfully completed, it turns out that it does not bring that much pleasure but instead evokes shame, guilt, and an even stronger sense of dissatisfaction, depending on the situation in which a given character finds themselves.

The above reflections lead to an obvious conclusion: Industry is a well-known story about the young and beautiful who want to be rich, if they are not already thanks to their parents.

Despite its repetitiveness and reliance on the same patterns, episodes of the series are in their own way captivating. Apart from the fact that we like well-known songs and things of that sort, there is simply something familiar in the fates of the small group of employees we observe.

It is not about their social status or the adventures they experience, but rather about the despair gnawing at them despite an approaching professional breakthrough. The protagonists are in complete turmoil, play various roles, and hide their emotions at all costs, and the best part is that it is not entirely clear why they prefer masks instead of their true faces. Admittedly, they could shift responsibility onto the oppressiveness and hypocrisy of the world surrounding them, yet it is hard to shake the impression that to some extent they themselves have prepared this fate.

For this reason, watching Industry, especially for someone of the same generation as the characters, passes in a pleasant atmosphere. There is much repetition in the BBC and HBO series, many worn-out patterns, and yet the felt affinity with the emotional turbulence presented suggests that this title is not so meaningless after all. Or perhaps this is the only honest way to tell the story of people seriously entering adult life?