The notion of “prestige television” is always in flux, being defined and redefined each season as tastes, trends, and audiences change. If we go by the idea that “Peak TV” represents the best of the best, we could say that “prestige” is a label that communicates quality across all traits; the acting, the casting, the production values, the costumes, the writing, the direction, they’ve all got to embody the je ne se quoi of high quality.
To some extent, quality is subjective, making pinning down “prestige” difficult. That being said, how I define “prestige” may differ from how others define it, so take all of what I say here with a grain of salt. I believe that “prestige television” is in all ways exemplary and truly impressive in its ability to fire on all cylinders. It doesn’t mean that everyone will like it, but everything is well-executed from writing to acting to direction to visuals to editing and no corners are noticeably cut. Given how crowded the field of “prestige TV” has become, I think the label has been used too liberally as a marketing buzzword rather than as an accurate description of quality.
The HBO Max series Industry returned for a third season and I noticed an unexpected trend in critical pieces about the show: it was being talked up as HBO’s new prestige crown jewel. It’s a little perplexing to see Industry , a show that’s basically Grey’s Anatomy but at a bank instead of a hospital, be compared to Succession. I love Industry ! It’s a very entertaining show with great performances and a slickly serious look, but it has absolutely nothing on Succession. To the extent they are similar, it’s only in how both shows delight in the foibles of awful people as they fuck, fight, and fumble their way through the business world.
The important differences are many. Succession invests the viewers in its characters, threading the needle so that viewers both despise and love them while Industry has more archetypal characters that we don’t get to know very well outside of the desperate business moves and personal dramas. Succession created a perhaps too-accurate rendering of the 2016 election night with the unsettling assent of an actual fascist abetted by the news media and Industry paints with garden-variety cynicism to present the banking world as an indistinctly evil place. Succession braided together many different plot and character threads to create a resonant portrait of modern power and Industry shows us beautiful people doing bad things that blow up their lives. With all love to Industry, it’s not Succession , and it shouldn’t have to be.
Industry, like Billions, is a solid B-level take on the cutthroat business milieu. The characters, to the moderate extent we get to know them, act more like avatars than people. The arguable protagonist of Industry, Harper (Myha’la Herrold), has a barely sketched-out background to explain why she’s such a banking terminator and the supporting characters get even less detail. It’s not a problem per se, due mostly to the strong and compelling performances from the cast, but it’s a noticeable lack of the series. The fact is, Industry is a show that doesn’t cut that deeply and that’s perfectly fine! Shows don’t need to have deeper meanings or unearth new horizons of understanding the human condition. Shows can just be entertaining and Industry is certainly that. It’s enough to watch Harper slide through the dark waters of finance like a shark, to see Robert (Harry Lawtey) play out weird and abusive mother/son dynamics with a client, to see Yasmin (Marisa Abela) in a constant state of flailing as she tries to define herself outside of her rich party girl identity. Industry doesn’t cut deeply on any of these things because it doesn’t need to. There’s plenty of fun in seeing these gorgeous miserable fools careen into one another and watching them scheme and scramble. The actual events of the show are interchangeable to a certain degree (money lost, money made) because the goal of Industry is to show these people under intense stress and to show viewers how they may break. It can be a bleak watching experience, but always fascinatingly so. The world of Industry is small and barely exists outside of the metal-and-glass Pierpoint bank, but the nasty cross-section of personal ambition and reckless excess is a world unto itself.
So why is the claim that Industry is here to herald the next generation of prestige programming being made? One reason might be how the “prestige TV” landscape has been succumbing to a sort of bloat that reduces “prestige” down to an aesthetic. House of Cards, Netflix’s first original series, was not a very good show, but it cemented the darkly-lit David Fincher aesthetic that pervades prestige series to this day. Industry lives in this look, with its low-droning music adding simmering tension to moody shots of characters amid breakdowns. Another reason might be more specific to HBO/Max. The content released under HBO CEO Casey Bloys and WarnerBros-Discovery CEO David Zaslav has been middling with their flashier efforts like The Regime and The Sympathizer being more or less dead on arrival. HBO used to be the de facto home of the best series television could offer, but the usual prestige Sunday slot is inhabited by much more meager offerings. It feels like a long stretch of nothing in between now and the eventual next season of The White Lotus or House of the Dragon. HBO’s age of reliability is almost certainly over for now and it seems to have left the network (and viewers) clinging to any sign to the contrary. I can see how Industry in its watchablity and competence might seem like a lifeline. Essentially, I think Industry being crowned this way has almost nothing to do with the show itself and everything to do with the crummy circumstances HBO/Max finds itself in.
Industry is great and it’s tremendously fun, but prestige it is not. Great shows with modest ambitions shouldn’t be saddled with expectations of prestige. It’s not the next wave of Peak TV, but it doesn’t aim to be. Enjoy Industry on its own merits: seeing fiercely-acted performances from hot people going to operatic extremes to destroy themselves and others. Enjoy it for Marisa Abela showing viewers how much better she is than Back to Black may have you believe. Enjoy it for seeing Kit Harrington play a detestable prick of a CEO who seems to be competing for the title of the biggest asshole at an Olympic level. Enjoy it for Ken Leung’s acting clinic in being ice cold and for Sarah Goldberg’s return to the screen as a sharp-tongued skeptic in the ethical investment field. Industry is a solid, acid-tongued B-grade series. That’s valuable on its own and we can only make it look worse by imposing A-grade expectations onto it. Let Industry be great on its own terms and not be construed as the savior of quality television just because HBO/Max really needs a win right now.