BBC and HBO’s Industry features university graduates striving for permanent positions at Pierpoint and Co, an esteemed investment bank. Where we left off in series two, Harper (Myha’la Herrold) and Eric (Ken Leung) had just pulled off a dramatic deal with Bloom (Jay Duplass) and secured themselves new positions at Pierpoint, but not without the help of some very illegal insider trading.
The March conference, “Buckinghamshire: delivering world-leading education pathways for film and television”, was initiated by the CEO of Marlow Film Studios, Robert Laycock.
It heard that the industry has grown 15 times faster than the economy at large, bringing with it unparalleled opportunities for highly skilled, well-paid and life-enhancing jobs. Buckinghamshire has become one of the key UK destinations for major high-end TV and film production.
Created by Steven Moffat (Sherlock), this four-part thriller poses the puzzle of how the lives of four strangers, a prisoner on death row in the US, a vicar in a quiet English town, a journalist, and a maths tutor, are unexpectedly, fatally linked.
Set in the pressure cooker environment of international bank Pierpoint & Co’s London office, the series follows a group of sex and drug fuelled young bankers as they forge their identities on the trading floor.
Written by Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, the eight-part series finds the Pierpoint employees back to work as the market rips, and the grads are no longer allowed to hide behind their graduate status and are more charged up and paranoid than ever.
Across eight more episodes, the drama will continue following the ambitious twenty-something bankers throwing themselves into the cutthroat industry of international finance.
The new recruits include Jay Duplass (The Chair), who will play Jesse Boom, a well-respected hedge fund manager and recent émigré. Sonny Poon Tip (Anatomy of a Scandal) will play his wilful son Leo Bloom.
Katrine De Candole (The Ipcress File) will play the multilingual Celeste Pacquet, one of Peirpoint’s Private Wealth Managers.
The winners will be revealed on Monday 22nd November, at the London Hilton on Park Lane.
Bad Wolf co-founder Jane Tranter shoots back with a rapid reply when asked what her Cardiff-based production company is up to: “Dealing with high-level anxiety all the time, probably emanating from myself.”
If so, Tranter – speaking over Zoom – hides it well. Any stress would be understandable. Against the backdrop of the pandemic, Bad Wolf has brought the second seasons of fantasy epics His Dark Materials and A Discovery of Witches to the screen, and launched two acclaimed contemporary dramas, Industry and I Hate Suzie.
The series, which aired on BBC Two in the UK and HBO in America, follows a group of young graduates vying for a permanent position at the cut-throat investment bank, Pierpoint & Co.
Industry’s first series centres around Harper (Myha’la Herrold, an American fish-out-of-water struggling to find her feet in London’s fast-paced financial district. She is forced to go above and beyond to prove her mettle among a cohort of hyper-competitive graduates.
Such was the case for Konrad Kay, the co-creator of the new HBO and BBC drama Industry. After three years at a top American investment bank, Kay was ultimately sacked for being ‘the worst salesman the bank had ever seen’.
“I think my boss actually said that to me almost word for word,” he laughs, “but I didn’t leave under a cloud, we were really good mates. I thought it was totally fair”.
Robert Rinder is known for laying down the law in court show Judge Rinder, where the barrister helps settle disputes and grievances.
