Series / Industry

"Pierpoint is the world's preeminent financial services institution; we expect you to behave like you have a stake in it. Act like an owner. Enrich your clients, enrich us, enrich yourselves. So look at the guy or gal next to you. Really look. Do you think you're better than them? Maybe you are. But half of you won't be here in six months."

— Eric Tao

Industry is a drama created by Mickey Down and Konrad Kay and produced by the BBC about a group of young graduates competing for permanent positions at a top investment bank in London. The series deconstructs the world of high finance and the changing business landscape through the eyes of Pierpoint and Co.

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This show provides examples of:

• Abusive Parents: Various examples to various degrees across the series, but most noticeable with Harper. Her mother was so destructive both she and her brother ended up running away. When Harper finally reunites with her brother, though, he feels just as much anger towards Harper as his mother for pushing him to excel at tennis, even though she was the same young age he was on account of them being twins, so his speech reads as a result of displacing some of his anger at being abused onto someone he wanted to be in his corner instead of the perpetrator. Harper equally hated that he ran away and left her behind and that their lives had revolved arounf his athletic success until then.
• Affectionate Nickname: Eric refers to Harper as 'Harpsichord' sometimes.
• The Alleged Boss:
  • Sara is supposed to head Pierpoint's London office, but the MDs clearly have little respect for her and Bill Adler doesn't have time for her opinions and overrides her decisions. Best illustrated when she mismanages an incident where Eric berated Harper, using it as an opportunity to get rid of him. The situation blows up in her face because she underestimated how much the firm values Eric and inadvertently puts Harper firmly in Eric's camp with her condescending compassion.
  • Daria is technically Harper's supervisor, but Eric takes direct charge of Harper's development while going out of his way to freeze Daria out of deals and badmouth her on the floor. She tries to fight back, but badly overplays her hand and unwittingly puts herself in an even weaker position within the company. By the end of Season 1, Harper uses the leverage she gained from Sara's mismanagement of the Eric incident to bring Eric back into the fold while pushing Daria out.
  • In Season 2 Yasmin is supposed to be Venetia's supervisor but the rest of the desk (and Rob, who is in CPS) more effectively look after her than Yasmin does.
• All for Nothing: To varying degrees but most notable with Harper and Yasmin. After several reversals of fortune, Harper faking her college transcript back in season 1 is exposed and she is fired - if she cannot get another job she might be forced to return to New York, which she wanted to avoid above all else. Yasmin meanwhile moves teams in an effort to make a name for herself - but tying her fortunes too close with her father's results in her eventually losing her biggest client relationship when she decides she no longer wants to work with her father, and a dispute with her father leaves her locked out of her bank account and the house she was living in. With the exception of Rob who is still enmeshed with Nicole as a client, most of the graduates haven't finished much better than they've begun. Harper is fired, Yasmin is broke and contemplating leaving Pierpoint, Venetia is disillusioned with the entire system and Gus has been shut out of a career in politics and ends up hired by Jesse Bloom. Ultimately while the name of the team has changed, little is materially different - Eric is back in charge and Rishi is the main executor, with no sign any of the culture at Pierpoint is going to change.
• Broken Ace: Harper's brother Mike excelled in tennis but felt forced to do it to be perfect, with his mother outright telling him she would kick him out if he didn't win. Harper herself excels on the sales desk but is clearly struggling to balance her will to succeed with her impulsive need to win at all costs.
• Bad Boss: All over the place, but most notable with Eric and Kenny. Eric demeans and belittles people on the floor, gets dressed right in front of them, compromises business deals by making personal remarks about the client's wife and then blames Harper for not sticking up for him when he attempts to get them back onside, then boxes Daria - her line manager - out of working with her. Kenny is similarly dismissive of Yasmin at first but later reveals he's treating her the way he was first treated when he was hired and apologises for snapping at her when drunk. Neither of them are portrayed as solely bad people, just that they've been moulded by the competitive cut throat environment they're surrounded with, and they pass their dysfunction onto their employees, more so in the case of Harper who willingly lies to Daria to try and recover the account Eric lost in the first place.
• Big Eater: When at her seat, Harper can be seen working her way through large meals like a Full-English or a loaded burrito or is seen with a large, open bag of crisps. The FX desk, by contrast, stick to healthier salads.
• British Brevity: The first series has only eight episodes. So does the second.
• Brutal Honesty: Eric doesn't sugarcoat anything when dealing with his employees. He even says he doesn't care if his clients lose money. What matters is that they give him their cash so he can make Pierpoint more money.
• The Chain of Harm: In the first season Kenny puts graduate Yasmin on the spot by demanding she pitch an idea, then belittling what she comes up with. Come the second season she does the exact same thing to another graduate, Venetia. It's implied she does this because she's jealous that Venetia has the guts to stand up for herself and point out expecting the graduate to do a salad run is inappropriate. This becomes much more depressing when it extends to how Yasmin handles Venetia telling her Nicole sexually assaulted her - at this point Yasmin has compartmentalized being forced into a lapdance and having a colleague force himself on her, resulting in her basically telling Venetia to pretend it never happened and think of her career as a whole, like she did. She later apologizes for this when called out by Kenny, but the damage is done at that point. Interestingly Kenny later admits this wasn't the case with him - the boss he had didn't treat him as bad as he did Yasmin.
• Character Tic: Felim Bichan has an odd habit of dipping his right ring finger into a glass of milk and tasting just that one drop and ignoring the rest. Harper notices this and references it in the subject line of her email to Felim to draw his attention.
• Chekhov's Gun: Early on in the series Greg suggests someone let Yasmin know Bloomberg Terminal messages are monitored by managers. In the second-to-last episode it is revealed that her boss learned of her supervisor's poor behavior by reading these messages, and pressures her to keep quiet.
• Chekhov's Gunman: When Eric, Harper and Rishi are attempting to jump ship from Pierpoint they interview at a couple of different places, and at one of them it seems to be going well... until Daria walks into the room.
  • Nicole also. Throughout the series Nicole has sexually assaulted Harper, then Rob. When Nicole does the same to Venetia, she actually reports it, which leads Danny to find out about the whole chain of events.
• The Chessmaster: Downplayed but seems to be the case with Jesse Bloom - he kept a disastrous short position open likely because he knew Harper was friends with Gus, who is working for the MP who has access to information concerning the healthcare companies he's invested in. When Harper brings him information that can help him turn things around, he first checks she isn't wearing a wire before telling her to make a series of trades that amount to insider trading/market manipulation - and stand to make him a lot of money out of previously disastrous tickets.
• Child Supplants Parent: A variation. Eric has a habit of becoming very invested in the people he mentors but when they inevitably adopt his dog eat dog habits and don't act subordinate to him forever, he becomes resentful.
• Chronic Backstabbing Disorder: A number of the cast have this habit, but Harper doing this forms several major plot points. First she ousts Daria to reinstate Eric, then she costs Eric his biggest client by favouring a newcomer, getting him Reassigned to Antarctica, and then she dupes Rishi into a bad trade to help her big client. Her last move is to turn on Pierpoint itself, attempting to find new work elsewhere - but even that results in she and Eric betraying Danny and Rishi in order to secure a new team at Pierpoint when the move doesn't work out. This ends up being All for Nothing when Eric finally turns on her, presumably as delayed recompense for her earlier betrayal of him, bringing Rishi back into the fold and exposing Harper for faking her college transcript all the way back at the start of the series and getting her fired, leaving the audience to assume Eric is poaching Jesse Bloom as a client from her as well.
• Decoy Protagonist: Hari is set up as one of the graduates we'll be following throughout the first series along with the main three. He's even prominently featured in advertising, such as in the page image. However, he works himself to death early on.
• Determinator: Most characters have shades of this but Harper is probably the most prominent example. When she has her sights set on pleasing a client or succeeding at Pierpoint, pretty much nothing and no one will stand in her way of achieving it.
• Double Standard: Rape, Female on Female: Averted - when Venetia admits to Kenny that Nicole sexually assaulted her, he takes it seriously - as does Danny. She also tells Yasmin, and though Yasmin tries to minimize it and get her not to tell anyone Yasmin doesn't imply it couldn't have happened because Nicole is female. While the characters have differing reactions to it, no one suggests it's less serious or different because the perpetrator is female.
• Double Standard: Abuse, Female on Male: Downplayed, but when Rob admits to Danny that he knows preying on clients is a pattern with Nicole he characterizes his own relationship with her as consensual. Danny doesn't ask whether he felt coerced into it, though there's clearly an unequal power dynamic at play between he and Nicole given that Nicole could just withdraw her business and have someone else cover her if Rob does anything to displease her (not to mention the obvious age disparity between the two). This exact problem crops up later on - Rob no longer wants to do business with her after what she did to Venetia, but she offers a trade big enough for him to get more attention for his career. Ultimately he caves to the pressure and takes the trade.
• Easily Forgiven: Eric seems to forgive Harper incredibly quickly for costing him Felim as a client and getting him Reassigned to Antarctica, even seeming to misplace some of the blame on newcomer Danny. Turns out this isn't actually the case come the end of season 2 when he reveals her forged university transcript and gets her fired.
• Fatal Flaw: Both Harper and Yasmin shoot themselves in the foot as often as they succeed. Harper's main problem is her tendency towards chronic lying - she will say and do anything to get a good result, including stab numerous people in the back which leads others to struggle to trust her just as often as it pays off. Yasmin meanwhile tends to try and use her connections to get ahead, but this usually causes problems - her main attempt at securing a client in season 1 is family friend Maxim, who is appalled that she doesn't protest when Kenny pressures her to get a lapdance she clearly doesn't want because she thinks it just part of the business. Her major move in season 2 involves working with someone to handle her own father's money - which goes incredibly poorly because of how strained their relationship is, from her struggling to get any professional respect out of him to discovering he groomed her childhood nanny.
• Forgotten Fallen Friend: Downplayed, but Hari is mentioned increasingly less as the show goes on. It helps emphasise how Pierpoint is a system that chews people up and spits them out. The only real consequence is no one is quite sure what to do with Gus, since they view 'friend of the graduate who overworked himself to death' as a PR liability, something Gus calls out himself later on.
• Functional Addict: Most of the cast regularly take cocaine, often to keep them going through late stressful nights, but no one seems to be suffering much consequences for it. Rob at one point gets a nosebleed, but whether this is due to nerves as he claims or a result of drug abuse is never clarified and it never comes up again.
• Green-Eyed Monster: Non-romantic example. Daria is clearly jealous of how Eric pays attention to Harper and gives the graduate opportunities more senior members of the team don't get.
• Heroic BSoD: Finding out one of their clients has sexually preyed on multiple people leaves Danny feeling shaken up about the industry, especially when he knows one of those people is Harper, seemingly assuming it's the reason she doesn't fully trust him.
• Hoist by His Own Petard:
  • Hari attempts to show off his dedication to Pierpoint by taking on extra work and never leaving the office — relying on short naps in the toilet and pills for energy instead. This ends up killing him.
  • Sara and Daria's attempts to force Eric out blow up in their faces as Harper grows tired of their attempts to frame her as a victim and uses actual leverage given to her by Pierpoint's CEO to get Daria fired and diminish Sara in the eyes of the rest of the office.
• Intimate Marks: Harper has tattoos on both her breasts, right under them, and on her stomach just over her crotch.
• Ironic Echo: Rob repeats Clement's mantra 'make yourself big in your own life' after his passing, though he is clearly grieving and struggling to make his mark at Pierpoint.
• Jaded Washout: Clement Cowan was once a high flyer at Salomon Brothers in the 90s. Now in his 50s, he's barely holding on as a VP as people decades younger than him pass him on the career ladder and graduates view him as a cautionary tale.
• Jerk with a Heart of Gold: Eric Tao doesn't hesitate to hand out brutal put-downs to people in full view of others. He does demonstrate a soft side, however, most notably with Harper. He takes her under his wing, shields her background from close scrutiny, and berates her only in private. He even gives her an enormous bonus just because he can.
• Mr. Fanservice: Gus and Robert get their own share of shirtless scenes as well as occasional full-frontal nudity.
• Ms. Fanservice: Yasmin and Harper are both in multiple scenes where they're topless while having sex, taking nude pics of themselves or otherwise undressed. Both are very good-looking.
• Never My Fault: When Rob confronts Nicole for being a predator and sexually harassing himself and his colleagues, she takes issue with him characterising her as such, claiming she just gets drunk and handsy, then accusing him of playing the victim.
• No Such Thing as H.R.: Turns out to be literally the case with Pierpoint. When Venetia reports Nicole having groped her, Kenny is unsure who to actually go to for help because there is an unclear support system.
• Off the Wagon: Rob falls a spiral into one when he discovers his old mentor Clement has passed away.
• Reassigned to Antarctica: Happens to Eric in Season 2 - when he goes behind Harper's back to try and poach Jesse Bloom as a client after asking her to trust him, she goes against the plan that would have sold Jesse's shares back to Eric's client Filam and instead encourages Jesse to buy more controlling shares. Given the firm was on thin ice with Filam already it costs Eric one of his major clients and when he returns to work he's first moved into his old mentor's office away from the trading floor, then into an office even more remote than that with reduced employment hours, the company having effectively forced him into soft retirement.
• Reformed, but Rejected: A big source of the tension between Kenny and Yasmin. In Season 2 he gets sober and begins following steps to repair the harm he's done, including apologizing to Yasmin for his behaviour and telling her it would mean a lot if she came to a meeting. She frequently gets angry and frustrated with him in more candid and vulnerable moments, culminating in her blowing up at him for criticizing her about how she shut down Venetia's attempt to tell her Nicole sexually assaulted her, which she views as hypocritical as he peer pressured her into getting a lapdance the previous season, costing her a client who wasn't impressed she thought she had to play along to keep his business.
• Ship Tease: Throughout. But the series focuses on the romance between Robert and Yasmin.
• Small Name, Big Ego:
  • Daria sees herself as a rising star, but she struggles to close vital deals and mangles delicate negotiations with big clients, costing Pierpoint business.
  • Kenny Kilbane likes to swagger around the office, then his MD upbraids him in public for not having brought in any new business since his last promotion.
  • Clement similarly only has one big account - who promptly retires at the end of the first season, resulting in his redundancy. Prior to then he'd had quite an ego despite being principally successful in the 90s.
• Standard Office Setting: The primary setting of the series is the trading floor of Pierpoint.
• The Gambling Addict: Never explicitly stated but certainly seems the case with some of the Pierpoint staff and their clients, most notably Harper and Bloom. Harper is noted as 'always having her foot on the accelerator' and making big, risky plays and she suspects Bloom is the kind of client who wants to be on the edge of whatever is new and different. Notably their driving motivations behind behaving this way are likely very different - Harper is heavily implied to have come from a very impoverished background and is described as having a chip on her shoulder, so she both wants to prove herself and, in the second season, is desperate not to be sent back to New York. Bloom meanwhile is massively rich and bored, seemingly seeking thrills rather than just making more sensible and sure bets all the time, which allows Harper to keep his ear even when some trades begin to go south.
• The Peter Principle: Robert struggles to impress during Ri F but gets hired anyway as some of the hiring board feel talking to someone like him (the subtext being: a man with a background similar to them) would make them more comfortable. Season 2 deals with his struggles to rise to the occasion as he's initially anxious about picking up the phone, something with Harper and Yasmin already got comfortable doing in Season 1.
• Token Minority:
  • Robert discusses this trope when he shows a picture in a corporate magazine in which a minority character had been edited in to Yasmin.
  • Sara does the same when she suggests that Gus can rise quickly through the firm if he accepts her offer to keep quiet about a scandal.
• Twofer Token Minority:
  • Gus is both black and gay, this is lampshaded by the President of Pierpoint London who suggests hiring a highly intelligent minority would make the firm look good.
  • Harper is a black woman.
  • Yasmin is apparently of Arab descent while she's into women along with men it turns out.
• Sympathy for the Devil: Rob theorizes Nicole's predation of others is due to her own loneliness, comparing her to his abusive mother. She doesn't seem to like him pitying her.
• The Unreveal: It turns out Eric doesn't actually remember what he said to Felim's wife that offended them both so much it nearly cost Eric his business.
• Took a Level in Jerkass: Most of the primary cast but very prominently with Yasmin, since she begins as shy in Season 1 but becomes more confident in Season 2, resulting in her using her new power to demean a new graduate joiner, Venetia. She also is especially abrasive to Kenny, but he at least had gone out of his way to be cruel to her in season 1, with it being heavily implied he used the companies internal systems to send her inappropriate messages (which Yasmin was encouraged not to report). Later in season 2 she balances out between her old and new selves, moving departments and offering her help to Venetia if she ever needs it.
• Took a Level in Kindness: On the flip side of the coin, Kenny returns to work in season 2 kinder and even apologises to Yasmin for how he treated her in season 1. He and Danny are the only ones who take it seriously when Venetia reports Nicole having sexually assaulted her. Gus also - he begins working under an MP and begins to care about her constituents, who she'd been ignoring. Rob also zigzags this trope throughout season 2 - he gives up on the party lifestyle he'd pursued in Season 1 and becomes more of a mentor to Venetia than her actual mentor Yasmin is. He also wants to cut off Nicole - once after discovering what she did to him was a pattern due to an offhand comment Harper made, then again when Venetia calls him out for having known what would happen.
• What the Hell, Hero?: Given the amount of backstabbing the characters do this happens a fair amount, but two notable examples are when Yasmin calls Harper out for getting Daria fired, and her brother Mike calling her out because he felt she enabled her mother's abusive tendencies. In both cases she is criticized for being self-centred, though the latter case is made more complex by Harper also being a victim of her mother's abuse.
  • A mutual one near the end of Season 2. When Venetia reports Nicole groping her, she first goes to Yasmin who all but states she should bury it for the sake of her career. This gets back to Kenny who calls her out - and she calls him out in turn for having paid for her to get a lap dance she clearly didn't want back in Season 1.
  • Venetia to Rob - she realises he must have known that Nicole was a predator from the way he left a concerned voicemail the night she took a cab home with Nicole, and calls him out for lying about it. The guilt drives Rob to confess to Danny that he knows this is a pattern with Nicole.
  • Another one involving Yasmin - she discovers her father had a sexual relationship with her nanny when she was younger (and had also made a pass at another colleague) and calls him out for it. Her father in turn lays into her for never complaining until now because she had access to the family money and lives in a house he owns, causing him to change the locks and lock her out of the bank account. Since she never separated their accounts and all her work earnings are in that account, Yasmin can't even access the money she earned from Pierpoint, leaving her functionally broke at the end of the series.
  • Rob to Nicole. He calls her out for groping his colleagues and himself and she minimizes it as 'getting handsy'.
• White-Collar Crime: At the end of the series Harper is in a tight spot because a short position she recommended to her client is having its value artificially inflated as a meme stock, which is potentially costing him a lot of money. When she tells him confidential information in an effort to get him to just eat the loss and stop out the short, he instead takes the information and reveals it on television, resulting in two stocks at once moving the directions he wants them to. This is effectively insider trading, though it isn't what Harper intended to happen and she's visibly shocked.