★★★½ (3½ out of 4)
It’s reset time at “Industry,” the hot-to-trot HBO Max series—aka “Sexual Perversity in London Banking”—that seemed to have nowhere to go after Season 3 sent our favorite greedy guts into the wind with the collapse of the London office of Pierpoint & Co. Oh ye of little faith.
Thanks to the never-ending, delicious depravity of series creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay who once toiled in the money jungles, the old gang of randy brats are back together or at least comingling, thanks to a tech startup called Tender, whose American cofounder and CFO, Whitney Halberstram (a terrifically untrustworthy Max Minghella), is great at pretending that his company isn’t a front for distributing porn.
In moving up the social ranks in Season 4, this hot-blooded and hilarious series is sharper than ever at exposing lies coming from the seductive mouths of the beautiful and the damned.
What fun! Last season, our dear Yasmin Kara-Hanani (Marisa Abela, spikier than ever) locked herself into marriage with billionaire Sir Henry Muck (Kit Harington) whose legendary sexual hangups keep dinging his fragile image as the Prince Charming of London finance. Is Sir Harry capable of crimes of the heart or literally murder? Never discount his urges, especially after he loses his seat in Parliament and spirals into depression. Harington, universes away from the nobility of Jon Snow, is clearly having a blast crawling in the lower depths of the aristocracy.
And don’t worry about Harper Stern—a walking trauma in killer heels and instincts as played by Myha’la. Harper’s penchant for strap-ons and other kinky control games remains unabated. She’s started her own fund which allows her to use and abuse her staff with impunity. Heaven! She even brings retired Eric Tao (Ken Leung, ever the conniving, lethal delight) off the golf course with Donald J. Trump to share her joy in invading Tender.
It’s Whitney’s desire to turn his company into a legit bank that brings these characters together in a fresh roundelay of treachery and anal sex.
I could go on and tell you about Whitney’s war with his co-founder Jonah (Kal Penn) and how his assistant Haley, played with tight-skirted avidity by Kiernan Shipka, leaving behind forever her childlike “Mad Men” character, thickens the plot. She not only sleeps with a sleazy reporter, Jim Dycker (Charlie Heaton), out to put the screws to Tender, she’ll literally do anything to join the viper club led by Yasmin and Harper, who steal the show as usual with adder-esque gusto.
All I really need to say is that “Industry” is alive and thriving in Season 4, uncovering sicko behavior without wagging a finger at it. Instead, creators Down and Kay, who devilishly direct half of the eight episodes this season, have set their “Industry” baby on a new course with only a few stumbles along the way. I do miss those gladiator battles on the trading floor, often transferred to the bedroom. But in moving up the social ranks in Season 4, the hot-blooded and hilarious “Industry” is sharper than ever at exposing lies coming from the seductive mouths of the beautiful and the damned. You’ll laugh till it hurts.