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In one of the first scenes in season four of “Industry,” Harper Stern (Myha’la) receives a birthday card. Signed by her estranged mother, it reads: “Looks like you got everything you wanted.” Desire and drive have always been integral aspects of the series, but with this new season, the show chips away at the hardened resolve of all of its characters, etching away at their shells (and their safety) one by one. But for now, in the typical fashion of the show’s protagonist, Harper glances over her mother’s words before promptly placing the card in a shredder.
She now helms her own company, backed by season three standout Sweetpea Golightly (Miriam Petche), new blood Kwabena Bannerman (Toheeb Jimoh), and at times, Rishi Ramdani (Sagar Radia), who delivers information as a means to make money after his wife’s murder. Yet something is missing: a partnership that shaped Harper into the ruthless killer she is now. In an attempt to rectify this connection, she calls her old mentor, Eric Tao (Ken Leung), and asks him to leave retirement to work with her. Finally, after a season on the outs with each other, the two decide to begin another fraught relationship after a call from financial journalist Jim Dycker (Charlie Heaton).
In the shadows of a waning marriage, Yasmin Kara-Hanani (Marisa Abela) prepares for her husband Henry Muck’s (Kit Harington) 40th birthday party. After losing the MP vote, he’s nearly catatonic, sleeping until late in the afternoon and gazing at the family hunting rifles as if he’s looking at a four-course meal. While he haunts the manor he and Yasmin share like a ghost, she sets up a meeting between her husband and Tender interim CEO Whitney Halberstram (Max Minghella).
Feeling smothered by Henry’s increasing drug use and disgusted by his nonexistent libido, she uses this meeting as a means to give him purpose. But she soon comes to realize it may be one that her husband doesn’t have the stomach for, and one that comes with an offer that may be too good to be true.
There have always been two hearts at the center of this series: the relationship between Harper and Eric, and the relationship between Yasmin and Harper. While everyone was splintered off last season, they are finally brought together once again, sharing barbs as quickly as they do whispered admissions of care for one another. It’s particularly thrilling to see Myha’la and Leung back together again, with each scene between them unfolding into a display of two masters of their craft warring with each other. Their chemistry often feels like both respective actors have found the sole person they were meant to act alongside, peeling back Harper and Eric’s barriers and allowing us to see versions of them that, up until this season, they haven’t let each other see.
Like Yasmin, Henry, and even Rishi, these two are haunted by their past, which sometimes materialize as full-on ghosts, or flashbacks to previous episodes. Other times, simply uttering the names of these ghosts is enough, and, in doing so, their presence is reanimated to scar these characters further. Each character feels chained to their past this season, and the writing that comes from this blooming thread gives each actor a chance to deliver their best work to date.
Episode 2, in particular, is a fascinating chamber piece that quickly becomes Harrington’s swan song, where he shares harrowing glances with memories of the past, goes on a drug-fueled rampage, and has a breakdown to wavering crescendos of music. The final 12 minutes of this episode, like season three’s “White Mischief,” feel unlike anything this series has crafted up until this point.
Modern television is in a never-ending spiral, one in which limited series are extended and final seasons of major shows are incapable of sticking the landing. Yet with each new season of “Industry,” creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay push the show beyond its original premise, allowing it to become something new while still maintaining its sharp dialogue, thrilling score, and unwavering heart. Everyone’s secrets threaten their careers and personal lives this season, regurgitated like they’ve been stuck in their throats for days, months, and years.
Some of these secrets, which manifest as the season progresses, are so harrowing that they feel like they belong to a different show entirely. Yet once the final episode consumes you, it becomes clear that these seeds have been planted to ensure the survival of this series, which continues to metastasize as a fascinating, unknown, and complex entity.
In previous seasons, the rising stakes in “Industry” correlated to the careers these characters hold. In its new season, the show is taking a new turn, and it’s their personal lives and psyches that are constantly at risk. As the season progresses, the grip Harper, Yasmin, and their respective colleagues have on their lives begins to slip. It’s a gradual shift, but one that quickly overturns, with threats losing their jobs being traded in for threats of bodily harm and blackmail. The risks get more intense with each episode, sometimes veering so intensely off left field that they feel nauseating.
Each performer in the series is pushed to the brink, but it’s Leung, who, while always fascinating to watch, reaches a height in season four that is monumental. As Eric’s self-assured nature crumbled various times within each episode, Leung channels a vulnerability unlike any emotion we’ve seen displayed across his face before. His eyes become nearly vacant with fear, his hands trembling each time he moves them towards his face to bite his fingernails or scratch his face.
It’s a performance harnessed by Leung’s determination to unravel one of modern television’s most fascinating characters, as well as a testament to Down and Kay’s work, which never shies away from forcing its actors to operate outside the box that their previous roles could have ensnared them in.
The risks “Industry” and its creators are willing to take prove that the series is one of the best post-pandemic television shows to grace our screens. By allowing these characters to become their nastiest, most immoral selves, Down and Kay continue to push them to the point of no return, allowing their actors to inhabit them in a way no other television ensemble cast does. They disappear beneath the skin of each character, just as fast as these characters can subsequently disappear if they make one wrong move, which is amplified by each dizzying cliffhanger that closes out almost every episode this season.
With its fourth season, “Industry” has continued to shed its skin, leaving the husks of its already impressive previous seasons behind and transforming into a sharper, shattering version of itself, leaving viewers breathless each week.
All episodes screened for review.
from Roger Ebert https://ift.tt/FE6KuLh
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