Television’s least wholesome drama returned to BBC One early this month, offering more backstabbing, boozing, sex, snorting and frankly incomprehensible financial jargon.

Series 3 of Industry sees Pierpoint, in stark contrast to the behaviour of its employees, repositioning itself as an ethical investment bank when it takes on a new client, the green energy start-up Lumi. This is run by an aristo turned tech-bro, the aptly named Sir Henry Muck, and played with brio by Kit Harington, best known as Game of Thrones’ Jon Snow.

Harington joins cast regulars Marisa Abela (Yasmin), Harry Lawtey (Robert), Ken Leung (Eric), Myha’la (Harper), Sagar Radia (Rishi), Conor MacNeill (Kenny) and Sarah Parish (Nicole).

At an RTS London event late last month, the show’s creators and writers, TV first-timers Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, discussed how the HBO/BBC co-production, made by Cardiff indie Bad Wolf, has developed since its TV debut in November 2020.

“When we look back at the actors we cast [in season 1], they won’t mind us saying that they were fresh out of drama school – they were baby-faced ingenues. We were effectively watching all of these people grow up on screen,” said Kay. “We’ve grown with them as creators.”

Down added: “We had the base of two seasons of character development… You’d seen [them at the start of their careers] get salad orders and be sexually harassed by their bosses… so when we got to the second and third seasons, we could expand and raise the stakes, and it would feel totally organic.”

By the final episode of season 3, said Kay, “they are totally unrecognisable from the people who first started the show”. The “sweet spot”, said Down, who has been friends with Kay since their late teens, is “showing people a world which feels… authentic and realistic but having enough sensationalism to actually drive drama”.

"They're the worst, most sociopathic, borderline psychopathic people"

Kay added: “There’s the aspirational side of it, which is the wealth porn stuff – this is how the 0.01% live, let’s have a look at it.

“[But] with our characters, because they’re played with such naturalism by the cast… you can also project yourself into these people. You’re like: ‘These are the worst, most sociopathic, borderline psychopathic people but, some of their instincts, I’d be lying if I didn’t feel them within myself sometimes.’”

Their behaviour, he said, “scratches a reptilian part of [the audience’s] brain”.

Industry and another HBO hit, Succession, argued Bad Wolf executive producer Jane Tranter, though very different shows, have a similar appeal.

Both “peer down a microscope at the lives of a group of people that you don’t normally get to look at, combined with the fun and horror of outrageously poor behaviour, combined with a surprising feeling of relatability to these crazy fuck-ups”.

Many broadcasters, she added, would demand that their characters were softened. “They would say: ‘He’s got to atone or she has to be seen to have a heart as well’… but HBO are like, ‘Unleash hell.’”

So, expect the unexpected in season 3. “The idea of making a character as heinous as possible and then making you feel that they have a heart, pulling the rug from under the audience emotionally is something Konrad and I love doing,” said Down, hinting at one of the bombshells in the first episode of the new series.

In fact, there are three “what the fuck moments” alone in the series opener, added Down. Viewer, you have been warned.

‘Industry screening and Q&A’ was held at the Everyman King’s Cross on 30 September. It was hosted by Simon Harkness and produced by Phil Barnes and Ian Johnson.