In HBOs Industry, true equality comes from money

Early on in HBO’s Industry, there’s an extremely familiar scene: a boss addresses a room of young recruits and tells them that only half of them will make it and that they should do whatever they can to be one of the last ones standing. And so another group of promising young people sets their lives ablaze in the service of an exploitative industry, with the promise of money as the light at the end of the tunnel.

Industry — created by Mickey Down and Konrad Kay, with a pilot directed by Lena Dunham — is set in London’s world of high-stakes investment banking, and it follows a diverse group of fresh graduates who are the latest hires for the fictional Pierpoint & Co. Cliché abounds, especially in the way the young new hires are hazed and...

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