Two former bankers turned their experience into HBO’s most underrated show. Now, it’s finally getting the attention it deserves.

“Industry” is poised for its breakout season

The heart of “Industry,” the HBO show Down cocreated with his friend and fellow ex-banker Konrad Kay, thrums with a similar tenor of existential danger. The show, whose third season premieres Sunday on HBO, follows a group of twenty-somethings working at the London branch of the fictional Pierpoint & Co. investment bank, where access to money, power, and influence fluctuates with the whims of tyrannical bosses, Pierpoint’s privileged clients, and the market itself.

The drama series delivers both Emmy-worthy performances and juicy scenes of bankers behaving badly — though it was the latter that garnered the most attention when its first two seasons premiered in 2020 and 2022. Why call “Industry” a well-made drama that depicts bankers as three-dimensional characters when you can call it “sexy,” “drug-fueled,” and “the missing link between ‘Euphoria’ and ‘Succession‘”?

Now, after two seasons of flying under the radar and developing a cult following, “Industry” is poised for its breakout moment. HBO is betting on it as the network’s next buzzy prestige drama, awarding it the coveted Sunday night time slot once occupied by “House of the Dragon” and “Succession.” Reviews so far have been glowing, with season three boasting a 100% critics score on Rotten Tomatoes as of this writing. With “The Summer of the Finance Bro” already in full swing, could this be the season “Industry” finally cuts through the noise?

Down and Kay populate their show with colorful characters, from a posh green energy startup CEO with a golden shower kink to a philandering trader with a foul mouth and a secret gambling addiction. Many of them are amalgamations of people they know from running in these circles — because the truth, Kay says, is often stranger than fiction.

Rich people “have these quite unbelievable character peccadilloes,” Kay says, adding, “You meet these people, you spend an hour with them, there are seven things that you could pull from that chat that if you dramatize, you’d be like, ‘It feels too heightened.'”

So how do you make someone larger than life — say, that CEO who’s into golden showers — not seem like a caricature?

“Usually, it’s a gateway into a character,” Down says of the show’s treatment of sex and sexuality. Understanding a character’s eccentricities — sexual or otherwise — can shed light on why they are the way they are.”

“So we’re like, ‘Well, he likes…to be peed on. What does that mean? Does that mean that he can control the situation? Does that mean that he likes to show vulnerability without having to actually show it emotionally?'”

Four years into “Industry,” Down and Kay are much happier discussing the nuances of creating a believable startup founder than they would be actually working alongside him.

Down says the grueling hours of that early finance job, which prevented him from pursuing writing as a hobby, prompted him to quit wholesale and begin building a career as a screenwriter.

“I really credit finance with pushing me towards it because it’s the polar opposite of finance in some respects,” Down says.

“I love it,” he adds. “I can’t imagine doing something else.”