AHEAD OF THE GAME

The uncompromising banking drama Industry’ is raising the stakes. It’s smart, seedy, and offers a breath of fresh air in a television anseap full of superheroes, writes Nick Hilton

- Nick Hilton

When Game of Thrones first aired, back in 2011, it did so with a parental advisory rating warning for “strong violence, gore, sex, sex references, nudity and language”. It was, in short, made for adults. But by the time that show ended, its audience seemed largely composed of teenage boys, hopped up on a heady cocktail of dragons, zombies and boobs.

I wonder, then, what those same viewers would make of the sight of that show’s hero, Jon Snow (Kit Harington), receiving a very specific form of adult shower in the new season of the BBC’s banker drama Industry? In a world of swords and sandals, capes and cowls, this really is television for grown-ups (just don’t watch it with your parents).

Having successfully stripped the Square Mile of any remaining aspirational glamour, Industry returns this week for its third season. In the years since the show was commissioned, the tide of TV seems to have turned, leaving Industry an immutable, urine-soaked rock, battered by the retreating shoreline. The show has always been that rare thing: a drama that doesn’t compromise for the sake of its audiences. Its pilot episode kicked things off with a piece of misdirection, following a character who, by the end of the episode, would be dead.

Arriving on BBC One with full HBO credentials, and Girls creator Lena Dunham directing the opener, it was a stark mission statement. This wasn’t going to be a simple black comedy lampooning the artificially high-stakes world of corporate finance – it was going to stare into the dark heart of humanity. What’s followed is three unflinching seasons: characters who make bad, selfish decisions and hurt one another, a professional milieu of almost grotesque vapidity, and an alienating landscape of arcane jargon and bullpen manoeuvring.