Five university graduates pass a probationary period at Pierpoint, one of London's leading investment banks, after which only one or two of them will join its staff permanently. The series magnificently articulates the personal and work lives of these ambitious and insecure millennials, with their excesses and pressures, through very well-constructed characters and dialogues at times very hard.
A choral drama, at times bleak, about the construction and exercise of power and that puts the magnifying glass on meritocracy as a vehicle for labor and social advancement.
............................................................................................................................................................. Five university graduates pass a probationary period at Pierpoint, one of London's leading investment banks, after which only one or two of them will join its staff permanently.
The miniseries not only takes a look at what happens within these types of institutions but also immerses itself fully in the personal lives of these ambitious young people.
As for Pierpoint, we see the characters talking all the time about stock trades and other transactions that we do not technically understand (and do not need to understand), except that fortunes are lost or gained in instantaneous trades and understanding very far from common sense. . Each of the "graduates" has a manager and they are all in turn embedded in a tangle of complex management hierarchies and often in conflict. Another aspect addressed is the relationship of managers and their graduates with clients and their accounts. Although it exhibits a patina of informality, the work environment is obviously competitive and pressures and mistreatment abound.
The graduates are of diverse origins and social backgrounds and this can be seen in the other great section of the series: their personal lives. Although they compete for work, they form a twenty-something and millennial social group of changing relationships with each other, where sex, drugs and the night abound, portrayed with frankness and naturalness and where friendship is a possibility.
I am not fond of comparisons, but due to the depth with which it addresses personal and social ties, its relationship with work and the description of the work environment, the series is reminiscent of Mad Men, while the harshness of some of its dialogues refers to to Succession. Industry is one of those series that does not stop growing in interest and dramatic complexity, based on very well constructed and interpreted characters, ambitious but insecure, that make up a choral drama that highlights Harper Stern (Miha'la Herrold) as its protagonist, an American girl, perhaps the most adventurous, diligent and capable of the graduates. She is joined by Yasmin (Marisa Abela) the beautiful, rich and white girl who seeks to start "from below" in the company and Robert, the pretty boy from the interior of England (Harry Lowly), among others. And among the bosses and managers, Freya Mavor as Daria, Ken Leung as Eric and Derek Ridell as Clement stand out, among others.
Industry is a series as elegant as it is profound, whose electronic soundtrack (initially somewhat disconcerting) contributes decisively to its climates and to define its spirit. In short, a series about the construction and exercise of power and that calls into question meritocracy as a way of promoting employment in the environment it describes.
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