What Industry reveals about power in London

0:03From the outset, industry has all of the ingredients of a hit TV show. high stakes power struggles and a lot of drugs but does the show paint an accurate picture of london and if so what is it saying coming up what industry reveals about power in london access changes people's lives i'm building a financial institution and i need a partner who's in

0:40I'm sure you'll have heard people around you claiming that industry is one of the best shows on TV you might be one of these people and series 4 seems to be living up to audience expectations for today's episode I've gathered a couple of industry experts writer Laura Martin whose article for The Standard on industry is a reflection of London's power dynamics, actually inspired today's episode. It also caught the eye of today's other guest, industry superfan and lifestyle writer for The Standard, Maddy Masson. Welcome to the industry episode of The Standard. Today I have the pleasure of being joined by Laura Martin, who is a freelance culture writer.

1:22Hi, Laura. Hi, how are you doing today? Good, good. Very glad to have you here. And also on this episode, we've got Maddy Musson, our resident lifestyle and fashion writer and famous industry head within the Standards HQ. Hi, Maddy. Hi, thank you so much for having me. Thank you for joining me. So I want to begin our conversation with a confession, if I may. I've heard a lot about industry over the years but I'm actually yet to watch the show no this needs to change immediately I know I know terrible terrible but the news team was so keen for the podcast to cover the show and with good reason as I'm discovering so my first port of call in preparation for this episode was to look up the show's synopsis.

2:16So on IMDb, the synopsis is as follows. Young bankers and traders make their way in the financial world in the aftermath of the 2008 collapse. So if someone listening to this episode hasn't seen industry, what would your synopsis be? There was an old Gossip Girl synopsis that Netflix used for ages that was beautiful people do awful things to each other repeatedly and I think that that is a really good accidental industry synopsis. Yeah for sure the IMDB synopsis massively downplays it I just think it's a really fast paced and also incredibly anxiety inducing drama about the world of high finance but what I think is so interesting is most importantly it's about the type of people that are attracted to this industry and then how they're kind of making their way through this world.

3:12It's interesting because I think quite a lot of people have called it the successor to succession and it definitely has a few kind of similarities with that. There's so much hedonistic behaviour in it as well kind of that takes place both in the office and out of the office. So some people have called it skins in suits which I kind of find quite funny as well. I love that analogy. I think it tells you sort of everything you really need to know especially about the extracurricular activities, shall we say. So the show is in its fourth series. I want to just go back to the start. So a group of young bankers in the city.

3:49What are some of the most gripping moments throughout the four series that really stand out to you? I mean, it's all in, I think it's episode one that is the thing that really sets up the stakes of industry, which is one of the new grads does too much modafinil, which is like a study drug. and they're so competitive and he's constantly drinking Red Bull, staying up, trying to prove himself to these higher bankers that just don't really seem to care and he dies. I think he has a heart attack in the toilets and this really sets up the stakes of industry and improves just how dark they're going to let it go.

4:26Yeah, I think it sets the scene for the world that we're about to inhabit, doesn't it? Just high-powered, high-stress. And then interesting that you touch on how dark it gets because it can get really, really dark. And I think it's got darker as the series have actually gone on. So at the beginning, it's a group of graduates going into Pierpoint Bank, which is set in the City of London. They're straight out of university. They're very green. And then you kind of see them all trying to assimilate into this really highly toxic culture. So it's like workplace bullying, there's harassment, there's misogyny, there's racism.

4:58And then as we follow them throughout the series, it's like they're working out how they fit within this hierarchy of it all. and they too are kind of turned into monsters really they're taught the cutthroat world of sort of taking everything you can get whatever cost and like whoever you need to stab in the back so you're kind of watching all these characters assimilate into this really really kind of toxic world and then what that in turn turns them into yeah by the time that you get to season three and season four the stakes are so much higher because they by season four they've left the bank entirely And season three really amped things up.

5:36You then have people who are like very significant players in British politics. You have aristocrats coming in. And obviously the money is always a huge part of industry, but the stakes are even higher than you thought possible, which is pretty amazing considering they kill off the main character in episode one. What you learn about the characters only gets worse. You know, like it dabbles with incest and sexual assault and there's just constant drug use. and it's like watching uncut gems sometimes like it's a horribly high octane thing to watch that sometimes you just can't you can barely take it so conrad k and mickey down who are interestingly they're both former bankers so that's perhaps why they've got such a great insight onto this world but then they can take it and then just push it to these really far extremes um but it never feels unrealistic even like in the craziest episodes it always feels like that could happen and probably does happen in some places they're also um they're also Cambridge grads aren't they I think they met at Cambridge and they are I'm pretty sure both of them come from money and so they they seem to have this very good way of taking the mick out of the elite of Britain and how they talk and how they view themselves and stuff and the the dialogue is crazy yeah it's littered with jargon but also it's littered with all these kind of like niche references to ultra insider things that only these people would talk about and it's it's very very funny it's kind of like succession in it it's so like motor mouth insane what they're saying but it's it's got all of these gems hidden within it as well so laura in your recent piece for the standard uh how industry exposes the way london Powerworks.

7:25Highly thrilling read. You highlight that series four further expands its cynical worldview and shows how the rot has now leached out across all parts of society. Could you expand on this? Maybe you caught me on a cynical day writing that article. But I thought it was really interesting. And for me, I actually think series four might be my favourite so far. So this series is kind of focusing on the interconnecting worlds of we've got media, we've got politics, we've got fintech, we've got English high society and how they all kind of link to each other and how they're feeding off each other as well.

8:06One of the most prescient characters is Sir Henry Muck in this series who is played by the amazing Kit Harington. I feel this is one of the roles of his career in the industry. So good, he's fantastic. So good. But the really, really funny thing about him is this is a man who fails upwards. OK, so he's Sir Henry Marks. So he's been born a lord or when his father died, he became a lord. And he was head of a failed startup, Lumi. Then he goes on to be a short-lived MP and then gets ousted. And then suddenly he's offered the chance to be the CEO of this fictional online bank tender. So I found there were loads of similarities in the way English societies worked, especially over the past few years, in how overprivileged people are kind of handed this stuff on plates in industries they have no idea anything about.

9:02And, you know, they're really, really underqualified to be leading these industries or being at the forefront of politics or perhaps even leading the country. but I feel that's a really interesting reflection on London and UK society and how people are making these power moves. We'll take a quick break. Coming up, I ask Laura and Maddy about the Londonness of industry and how well the show portrays the city's work culture.

9:41Welcome back. Let's head straight back to the conversation with Laura and Maddy. It seems like London is such a big part of the show as well. What are some of your favourite kind of London moments where you just think, oh God, I've seen that happening or I can just totally imagine that happening? I really love inside the office when there are parties, like there's a Christmas party in series one and there is so much debauchery going on there are hookups and it feels so specifically British in that way that when you work in an office you've got all these like simmering resentments or you know desires of the working year and they all tumble out when the corks get popped in the office party so I always love those kind of ones and then also I really love the clubbing scenes in general just like when the characters industry go out and they let loose you know everyone's had those like lost 48 hour weekends what's really great about industry is they show the comedowns so they show like what happens when you have to crawl into work on Monday and then suddenly you lose two million pounds in a trade and it's that again it's that anxiety inducing moment of like oh god I've really messed up like the party's ended like this has put a full stop on it and now my life is terrible again.

11:08Maddy any moments that feel really London to you? Yeah well um it's weird because even though it is I think an innately London show mainly because of the way the characters are and how they talk and you know like finance and the kind of fast-paced 24-hour nature of it you don't actually see that much of london the majority of industry looks like a stock image of like if you google the word office you know it's just like glass it's mainly filmed in cardiff isn't it oh that's interesting because that makes a lot of sense because there are like some external shots of them like walking around near the thames and stuff or like having a cigarette outside of their canary wharf building the london of it all comes out through the way they act and like you said the clubbing scenes and the partying that's just like such a London highly strong workplace way of living there's a really there's two really amazing ones this season that we're yet to see um I won't spoil but basically there's one where it's just a night out that you know goes too far carries on into the daylight and they sit by one of the canals and have a cigarette and then decide to keep going and there's another where two characters have this night that you have been waiting for them to have yes i know what you mean and they do mdma together and they tell each other their true feelings and stuff and you are just like thank god it's it's so relatable you just think that is that is exactly what people in london would do if they had beef and they were going to squash that beef like it was yeah it's fantastic and how well do you think the show handles things like burnout you know the reality of working a high stress job in London I mean I don't know for you Maddy but for me I'm just like as stressful as journalism is and it is very stressful sometimes I'm like I'm just so glad I don't work in the world of finance and I guess it's that kind of thing of like being like well things are bad but they could be much worse yeah they're not that bad it's kind of like watching the bear where you're like at least I don't work in a kitchen where someone stabbed me yesterday yeah it's kind of like a bomb in a way where you're like oh okay at least that's not me yeah and I I think also the only characters that are really happy in it are the ones that have walked away so at the end of series three you see one of the main characters Rob he leaves to go and start a psilocybin startup in in Silicon Valley and you never hear from him again and then we have Gus who leaves as well and you don't really hear from them again and it's like the only ones that survive are the ones that leave the ones that say hey this isn't sustainable like I can't live on this level of stress and the ones who don't walk away it compounds it gets worse like Rishi obviously is a perfect example of someone that just keeps coming back and thinking like if I do the same thing I'll get a different result and then it just gets worse and worse and worse and it really does get worse I think so we've got episode episode four this week that is not for the faint-hearted so a philosophical question for you both just to wrap up our conversation today do you feel like industry is a critique of modern London or do you think it's a portrait that shows things how they are.

14:22Yeah I think it's a time capsule personally. It's probably a bit of both. I think it started off being a critique of a world that perhaps not many people are privy to and because of the creators we were able to kind of see this world from the inside but I think as the series has moved on we're now seeing like certain storylines or arcs that definitely feel influenced by the real world. I don't think it's too spoilerish to say there's definitely hints of Ghislaine Maxwell and Jeffrey Epstein in this series. We're going to see that as the kind of the series goes on. And although they were mainly operating in the US, we all know the links they had to British society here.

15:03So I think it's really fascinating and also really disconcerting to see industry pick up strands of that in the series. Yeah, I think while season one was maybe more of a critique of London and like the young London finance world it's so much broader now that it's more of like a critique of the United Kingdom and the way the structures of power are in general it's become so much bigger than than London even though it is still you know like innately London but that's the one thing where I think it is it is a portrait I think of London even if the themes are so much broader it is still something that I will watch in 10 years and I'll be like god that feels like the London that I lived in even though you know I'm not a banker and I'm not doing all the stuff that they do and stuff but I really do feel like that will have captured a time for me in a way.

15:57For sure yeah it's definitely yeah snapshot of this time and place in society, in London and who we are. Consider me influenced to crawl out from the rock that I've been hiding under by skipping this show. Thank you both so much for your incredible insights. I mean, I could literally talk about this all day and have done. Absolutely, I love it. Well, maybe we'll need a round two. Brilliant. Thank you so much. thanks so much thanks so much and that's the standard for all the latest news head to standard.co.uk if you'd like to get in touch email us at podcasts at standard.co.uk we'll be back here tomorrow morning see you then