Industry season 2 writers discuss the finance drama's "sensory overload"

When I suggest to Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, the show’s writers, that this is their most outrageous scene to date, they laugh. "That’s a power move by a senior person to tell everyone they’re the most senior," explains Down. "You would never be able to do that as a junior."

Power is the commodity chased by every floor at investment bank Pierpoint & Co in Industry. Made by the BBC/HBO and set in the City of London, the show’s toxic cocktail of financial jargon, scathing repartee and youth-centric soap-opera office dynamics has made it one of HBO’s most-watched shows in the US, and the first season a niche hit on BBC Two in the UK.

The show has jumped channels to BBC One for the second season, and the graduates, now over a year into their careers, have a similar amount to prove - but it seems these fictional characters might stay longer in their job than their creators.

12 months was how long Down lasted in the City as an intern on a mergers and acquisitions team, while Kay managed three years as an equity salesman at Morgan Stanley.

"There’s a certain level at which you can’t bulls**t your way to competency. People just see through you. I was three years in when my boss said, 'You’re s**t at your job,'" admits Kay. "And he was right. There was no dressing it up."

Down agrees he also reached his natural ceiling. "I had to work really hard to be average. Maybe decades ago you could be average in the job and make some money, but it’s a very technical and intellectually driven job now. You have to actually be smart. I had such impostor syndrome when I was in banking and I always knew I was never going to be good at it. My job was very technical and I’m not a technician."

This year is a critical one for fledgeling traders Harper (Myha'la Herrold), Yasmin (Marisa Abela) and Robert (Harry Lawtey), as well as their employer, the tireless money-manager that – ironically – doesn’t give its young employees much credit.

In reality, their careers are flying alongside the show's critical success, particularly in America where Industry has been a cult hit. Herrold stars in the new black comedy film Bodies Bodies Bodies, Lawtey will star alongside Christian Bale and Gillian Anderson in new Netflix movie The Pale Blue Eye, while Abela features in the Barbie film and is tipped to play Amy Winehouse in the biopic Back to Black. Some of Industry's characters would benefit from going to rehab.

As viewers discovered a fortnight ago, this is not an environment that has become kinder or more balanced in the past few years. The reaction to Harper's return, after months of self-imposed exile and remote working from a hotel room, was vitriolic.

When you understand this season's opening episodes were filmed in July 2021, the writers have been remarkably fortunate in how Industry's return to the workplace has been mirrored in real life. Down explains, "We didn’t want eight hours of a COVID drama, but we did want to see how it affected the characters."

The effects on society, especially attitudes in some offices towards working from home, were impossible to ignore. Kay says, "It won’t affect the story, but it will affect everybody’s psychology in their return to the office." Was Brexit a similar important topical thread that warranted inclusion? "I like mentioning Brexit because it gets up people’s noses," says Down. Kay’s analysis goes further. "No one can explain a single good thing that’s happened off the back of it."

The show's foresight, which both recognise is due to pure luck, is deeply entrenched in the new season, although that might not be obvious to many viewers. "We had a very good consultant on season 2, who’s a bit of a Zorro figure. What’s really weird is a lot of what happens in season 2 are events which have happened in the financial world in the last 12 months," reveals Kay. Down is comically regretful about losing a chance to make serious money. "I wish we’d traded off the predictions. The consultant jokes we’d all be in jail if we had."

Such coincidences have reinforced the drama’s authenticity – the pair speak of messages they’re sent by people who see themselves portrayed on screen. Friends of theirs, who still work in finance, make sly cameos, admits Kay. "We’ve managed to insert maybe six or seven of our friends' names into season 2, like when someone answers a phone and gives their full name."

Industry hardly idolises its subject. The poisonous attitudes and behaviours on the trading-room floor form a ritualised process for newcomers to endure, those who survive then perpetuating the practice on newcomers. In the opening episode, Yasmin is furious a graduate isn't forced to suffer being exploited as the desk gopher as she was – is that a commentary on the environment they experienced and would they hope to break that cycle?

"Cycles of harm are a very important facet of Industry," explains Kay. "That scene with Yas is a clear example of someone saying, 'You have to eat s**t because I was forced to eat s**t.' That was something I experienced very closely first-hand when I started work. The idea of treating people a certain way because you were treated a certain way, and not giving them a free pass, is very strange and a bit sick, but definitely true of those hierarchical structures."

That pressure, explains Down, extends to an ambient expectation of working norms. "There are people willing to come in at eight o'clock in the morning and leave at three in the morning, who clock up hundreds of hours a week. In respect of cycles of harm, that’s the cycle of convincing a junior person it's a badge of honour to work that many hours at their desk. That perpetuates across the entire investment banking industry."

Striking techniques used to replicate Pierpoint's dizzying pace, which places the viewer in Harper, Yasmin and Rob’s dazed and confused states, are the show’s pulsating electronic score and overlapping background conversations. "We’re immersing the viewer in the world the characters are immersed in," says Kay. "They’re distracted by the constant sensory overload. There’s always the next piece of business, the next line of coke, or the next person to sleep with."

Industry season 2 is available to watch in full now on BBC iPlayer and continues on Tuesday at 10:40pm on BBC One. Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide to see what's on tonight.

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