"Industry" on HBO: Thoughts?
So HBO is putting out a new show this Fall called "Industry", following recent college grads in London as they enter the world of Finance. You can read a description and see some pics here, here, and here. According to the last link, it's about "ambitious twenty-somethings struggling to secure their futures in the cutthroat world of international finance. The characters compete for a limited set of permanent positions at a top investment bank in London — but the boundaries between colleague, friend, lover, and enemy soon blur as they immerse themselves in a company culture defined as much by sex, drugs, and ego as it is by deals and dividends."
What are everyone's thoughts? Personally I'm glad to see a show about the field focusing on recent grads rather than just the SVP's and MD's. Do we expect this to end up with a new flood of undergrads trying to get into the field? Is it gonna glorify or damage the image of people in the industry? Throw out some opinions, folks!
I hope HBO can salvage it but I’m sure it’ll be over the top and inaccurate with plenty of black suits and brown shoes in the mix. And I’m sure there will be a sea of retards itching to get into S&T (lol) in the same way people get pumped when watching Billions. If you are a simpleton who gets motivation from watching a cable Tv show, may god help you
It's gonna be a british "Girls" in suits....which I am pumped for because that show is my guilty pleasure (if you just accept they are all trainwrecks and don't try to empathize, the show is 10x better).
I bet it opens as follows: over shots of oxbridge or the City in London, a main character will monologue first about wall street/finance, then about how coveted IB is, the pay, and how they only pick some tiny % of people, overlayed on quick, wrap around cuts of the main characters and some others confidently answering technical interview questions, one person will screw up. It will feel very much like an Aaron Sorkin movie.
Then it'll flash to the main character's working class upbringing. Then it will kick off to their first day at Goldman Stanley where they walk onto a crazy trading floor. It'll be shot single-camera style (think Friday Night Lights movie/the office). You will see people yelling into phones and bloomberg terminals. Someone yelling will bump into someone with papers and not stop to help.
there'll be an IPO scene, someone will get asked for insider info
there'll be a yelling-but-damaged boss, some one will sleep with their boss-potentially a pressured situation, someone will start doing drugs to cope, someone will have to deal with a poor/alcoholic father/mother, someone will have a gf/bf who "doesn't get it" ....the standard 20-something drama tropes.
Fucking pumped lol
They are going to have the 22 year olds overseeing their own books one day, running pitches/ IPOs the next, doing quant shit the day after that, having the weight of the entire bank riding on their shoulders, etc
Wish they could show montages of dorks gossiping over Bloomberg and sleep deprived children spending 20 minutes googling for solutions to their 3am #VALUE! or the perfect non-pixelated company logo. This is just going to make the unsolicited cringey LinkedIn invites pour in
I hope this show becomes a hit so people don't think I want to become a bank teller in my town.
I'm excited for the episode where they'll show the analyst doing nothing all day, spending half an hour deciding what to order on seamless (and trying to fit the extra salad for tomorrow's lunch within the $30 budget), and then ultimately receive 9pm comments so that he ends up staying past 3am aligning logos - gonna be a thriller!
>Lena Dunham
And for that reason, I´m out
Also I actually thought Hari was by far the best character imho - the actor nailed the role as a very smart but very insecure British working-class kid (I'm in the US but one of my parents is from the UK). The other characters seemed fairly generic/cliched. Maybe it's unfair to judge after just one episode. HBO productions are usually top-rate so I maybe just had my expectations too high.
Agreed, I liked Hari’s character a lot and also the dynamic between him and Gus.