Far too often in my lengthy career I’ve been tasked with the unfortunate responsibility of having to tell extremely proud and dedicated creatives that their baby is, at least in terms of hard numbers, ugly. That’s an even less easy place to be in when more than a smattering of tastemakers, especially those with pulpits of consequences, have anointed their works as something that a smart, discerning consumer you have, Have, HAAAAAVE to be watching, and shame on you if you dare to be so bourgeois that you don’t realize that.
During my time at FX I was often in a position of needing to put some sort of positive spin on shows that reviewers and influencers anointed in a such a way, sometimes based on actual quality and sometimes based upon the default position that if it was good enough for our team to greenlight, it obviously must be quality. Two such examples were the well-remembered legal drama DAMAGES, which gave arguably the most talented New York Mets lover I’ve ever met, Glenn Close, a well-earned Emmy and the somewhat less beloved attempt to cast Courteney Cox as a dramatic lead as a notorious tabloid magazine editor in a show called DIRT. DAMAGES in particular had a particularly eclectic following which its co-star Ted Danson would frequently tell us included none other than both Bill and Hillary Clinton, who’d make time to binge watch episodes while she was out on the presidential campaign trail. Both my employer at the time and my future employers at Sony reveled in such praise, enough so that they not only pressed forward with production even after its viewership had declined by more than half from its first season premiere to the end of its second but even after the profit margin gap became too onerous for FX Sony was able to convince DirecTV to air two additional seasons as part of an effort to provide homes for acclaimed but lesser-viewed shows that also included the TV version of FRIDAY NIGHT LIGHTS. In an environment where audience measurement wasn’t publicly disclosed and even if it were it was overly qualified by the limitations of the platform’s reach, DAMAGES was able to make it to 59 episodes without the weekly speed bumps of the inconvenient truth that those heathens at Nielsen would provide.
I suspect the few human beings that remain at HBO are in a similar position as I was this month with the Season Three premiere of INDUSTRY. You may have been among the ones who were early adopters of this British-American drama set in a prestigious London investment firm. It debuted in November 2020 in the eyeteeth of a raging pandemic in the wake of a still-undecided Presidential election on Monday nights, where it faced actual live competition from football. A second season had a similar slot two Augusts ago, where it overlapped with the far more anticipated and ultimately popular premiere of HOUSE OF THE DRAGON. As Wikipedia recalls, it at least made headway among the most passionate viewers of content:
On Rotten Tomatoes, the first series holds an approval rating of 76% with an average rating of 7.7/10, based on 38 reviews. The website’s critics consensus states, “Though Industry‘s social critiques tend toward the superficial, sharp writing and an excellent ensemble make it easy to enjoy its soapy workplace drama anyway.”[45] On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 69 out of 100 based on 17 reviews, indicating “generally favorable reviews”.[46] The second series has a 96% approval rating on Rotten Tomatoes, based on 25 reviews, with an average rating of 8.1/10. The website’s critics consensus reads, “Finessing complicated financial jargon into scathing repartee, Industry‘s stock is way up in this superlative sophomore series full of frustrated ambitions and tested loyalties.”[47] Vanity Fair described the series as the “missing link” between Succession and Euphoria.[48].
And this time around, that 96% approval level on RT is sticking, and the show is literally being drowned in praise. To wit, the gushing fangirless of ROGER EBERT.com’s Kaiya Shunyata:
Finally, at long last, HBO’s “Industry” will be getting a primetime Sunday-night slot with its third season. First debuting in 2020, the series hasn’t been able to pick up the viewership it deserves, despite having a dedicated online following. But, with season three it feels like the show is finally set to become the hit that it was always destined to be.
And TV GUIDE’s Allison Picurro:
Late in Industry‘s third season, Robert (Harry Lawtey), the series’ most forlorn figure, makes a pitch to potential investors. “I’m just here to give you an opportunity,” he says, a rare genuine smile on his face. “Join us on the ground floor of what is going to be a spectacular journey. Mark my words.” Such a line serves two purposes at once: It’s a character-solidifying moment for a newly confident Robert, as well as a wink to the loyal fans who have stuck by HBO’s perpetually under-the-radar British-American finance drama since its first season. Industry has made a habit of getting better with each season, but “spectacular” is indeed the best word to describe its frenetic, fascinating, and self-assured third season. If Season 1 was about a group of ambitious young people clawing their way into full-time jobs and Season 2 saw them trying to keep those jobs by any means necessary, Season 3 finds them settled in their roles and trying to carve out space for themselves. These new episodes (there are eight in total, all of which were screened for critics) are proof that the series, which has historically been spoken of as a de facto younger sibling to shows like Succession, Euphoria, and Skins, has fully come into its own.
And THE NEW YORK TIMES’ Esther Zuckerman:
The creators of “Industry” pitched the Season 3 opener to HBO with three words: “Coke and boats.”
“We were like, ‘Don’t kill us, but this is where we want to start Season 3,’” Mickey Down, one of the creators, said in a video call.
The HBO executives did not want to kill them. They were thrilled that the show, which follows a chaotic group of young employees at an investment bank in London and often deals with the more specialized details of finance, was going in a broader direction.
Throw in a double dose of deep dive coverage from the likes of THE RINGER’s PRESTIGE TV PODCAST and THE WATCH, where every trade, backstab and sexual dalliance is covered in the sort of obsessive detail typically reserved for far more populist fare, and you get the strong sense this is being willed into a place where even a David Zaslav-mismanaged platform would be forced to continue it, a view his executive in charge clearly expressed to Zuckerman:
“We have high hopes for the show,” said Francesca Orsi, head of drama for HBO, adding that if “the world embraces Season 3 in the way that we have, both in its critical praise but also its viewership, there’s no question that we want to continue moving forward with it.”
And thanks in part to the delays that last summer’s twin strikes caused, INDUSTRY has indeed been given that prestigious Sunday night destination slot on the linear HBO, not that more than a fraction of the audience it has was watching it “live” to begin with. Hence the first wave of data that was reported earlier this week by the likes of THE WRAP’s Loree Seitz was seen as some sort of justification for this gushiness:
“Industry” Season 3 debuted to a promising start, ratings-wise, with the Season 3 premiere seeing a 60% uptick from its Season 2 premiere, TheWrap can reveal exclusively.
The Season 3 premiere brought in an audience of 300,000 viewers across HBO and Max, according to Nielsen and Warner Bros. Discovery internal viewing figures. The Season 3 debut of the finance drama series, which received a 100% Rotten Tomatoes critics score, outpaced both of its previous season premieres, outperforming the series premiere by 88% and the Season 2 premiere by nearly 60%.
Now, of course, it aired against the closing ceremonies of the hugely successful Paris Olympics, which reached more than 21 million multiplatform viewers, a good chunk of them even on tape delay in prime time. But to put that number in perspective, a downtrending Season 2 finale for DRAGON the week before–against an even more viewed night of Olympic competition–reached 8.9 million viewers using similar WBD “frankenmetrics”. And all that got from Yosemite Zas was a date in 2026 for a previously greenlit season 3 and a pickup for what will turn out to be its fourth and final season sometime after that.
Obviously there is room for upside, both in delayed viewing for that “perfect” premiere, at least per the massive sample of RT critics, and on upcoming Sundays, at least before Sunday Night Football kicks in competitively. Hence the reviews continue to proliferate, and the drumroll of FOMO-laden encouragement continues in the form of talk show guest spots from much of its attractive cast. And with the likes of more familiar faces, certainly to HBO lovers, in the forms of BARRY’s Sarah Goldberg and GAME OF THRONES’ Kit Harrington now in the mix, the bookings are that much more impactful.
So I finally gave it my own shot. To me, it’s intelligently written, dense but intriguing and, yep, I’m a little infatuated with Yasmin myself. Will I come back? Likely. Will I binge watch the previous episodes? Not likely. And will I count down the minutes to the next episode the way I did with SUCCESSION? Not a chance. Fair warning: the British style and pacing is distinct, far more so than even shows that come from the minds of those with such training.
But in admitting my lack of enthusiasm for this, I’m reminded of the penalties one can pay for going against zealotic fervor, which in this case appears to be as much of a lifeline for the efforts of someone like Orsi to have ammunition of some sort to go to her bosses and keep both the series, and perhaps her position, going forward. When DIRT returned for its second season amidst similar strike-created scheduling dearth I was part of a massive campaign to get the show sampled, particularly in light of the changes it made to its cast and setting in ways akin to how INDUSTRY’s has evolved. We didn’t have “internal” numbers to boost our metrics; there was nothing positive for me to spin. My counterpart at Disney who was on our conference calls would lament “it’s such a shame that a show this good doesn’t have more positive numbers to talk about; it deserves a better fate”. That person was eventually hired by FX as my replacement, and they’re still there.
So my deepest apologies to HBO and all of your fans in high places. I’ll hope for the best, because it sure seems like you’re worthy of it. But you’ll have to get there without me. Yet again.
Until next time…