This week’s Industry plays like a funhouse mirror of the events in the third-season finale. Another birthday is the centerpiece at Sir Henry Muck’s (Kit Harington) ancestral home. But instead of a celebratory dinner announcing an engagement, relative newlyweds Henry and Yasmin (Marisa Abela) are already coming apart at the seams. It doesn’t help that Yas isn’t even allowed to open the drapes in her husband’s bedroom as he staves off another hangover. “You have to let her fulfill her function,” is Henry’s directive about letting the housemaid attend to said curtains. Everyone in this stately home lacks purpose, so what better time to throw a decadent, Versailles-themed costume party for Henry’s fortieth?
Similar to how the premiere jumped in as Harper’s (Myha’la) fund fell apart, Industry creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay waste no time building to the Mucks breaking point. There is zero drag in the storytelling, and this breakneck pacing is part of what makes Industry a deliriously compelling option amid wheel-spinning streaming slogs. And like the premiere, Kay and Down wrote and directed the excellent “The Commander And The Grey Lady,” and the time jump here isn’t a cheat code to circumvent plotting for fireworks.
Instead, all the groundwork was laid last season, first in an intimate swimming pool in Switzerland, where Henry first confided in Yasmin about his father’s suicide and his own suicidal ideation. In this week’s episode, we learn that Henry didn’t share how the events actually unfolded on the morning of his father’s 40th birthday. The rewritten version speaks to how this trauma is reshaped to be more palatable without factoring in the permanent damage to Henry’s psyche. There’s nothing quite like the British stiff upper lip and its unique ability to brush the worst moment under an heirloom carpet.
It would be easy to cast Yas in the Lady Macbeth role, whispering in her husband’s ear to benefit her own ambitions. While this archetype isn’t entirely off the mark, her scheme to get Henry a position within Whitney Halberstram’s (Max Minghella) “bank killer” Tender is as much about dragging Henry out of his debilitating funk as it is getting Yas back into the game.
Yas has tried myriad approaches, including leaning into the Tory-wife cosplay in the opening flashback. Abela and Harington are both on top form, capturing desperation and loathing (in Henry’s case, self-loathing). First, there’s the saddest handjob perhaps ever committed to television, where we hear rhythmic splashing before Henry cuts it short. He has already stood to attention in his proverbial birthday suit for his wife when she asked him to stand in the bath. Yasmin just wants them to look at each other again properly, but Henry struggles to meet her eye and maintain an erection. She’s trying to give him a confidence boost before his pre-party meeting with Whitney. However, this only makes Henry feel like more of a “fraud touched by success.”
Whitney is eager to find a partner who can open doors that money can’t buy. “Longevity in Britain is about access,” he tells Henry. What Whitney needs is connections that come from centuries of titles. Given that Yasmin told Whitney he could put his silver tongue to work on Labour MP Jennifer Bevan (Amy James-Kelly) in the last episode, he turns his attention to Henry, with Yasmin providing that particular entry point. It is this meeting that Henry views with suspicion, and the drugs in his system add to this notion.
A subtle callback to “happier” times for the couple comes in the shade of blue sash worn by Henry that matches his bow tie when he announced his engagement to Yas at his uncle’s birthday dinner. Of course, that color links to King Louis XVI, but this visual tether to the past doesn’t read like a coincidence. Costume designer Laura K. Smith decks Yas out in a chartreuse and peach Marie Antoinette-inspired frock with an elevated, contemporary twist: stacked Vivienne Westwood platforms that cause Yas to tower over Henry. That doesn’t go unnoticed, with Henry clocking her altered height in sweet bemusement that will soon sour.
The appearance of Yasmin’s aunt, Cordelia (Claire Forlani), also underscores Yasmin’s urgency to shed her current role as a spectator and caregiver. The pointed juxtaposition of Cordelia telling Yas to get off her knees and Yas later witnessing Cordelia on her knees giving Otto a blowjob is a reminder that Yasmin’s family tree is equally thorny. Daddy issues course through Yas and Henry’s veins. But Henry has to battle his demons alone rather than turn to his wife, who knows a thing or two about this topic.
Henry leans hard into his “poor little rich boy” mythologizing when it comes to a head. Shooting this on a handheld camera makes the fight feel more fluid and intimate, giving us a front-row seat. Yas cuts to the core of the romanticizing with precision and cruelty, suggesting it would be procedural, boring, and small if he died by suicide. She knows that Henry lied about the circumstances of his father’s death, and later, we learn why Henry’s construction involves his dad walking out onto the moor alone. It is far more disturbing that Henry witnessed it all. Even more alarming is the suggestion that his father orchestrated his son’s spectating.
Henry is no match for Yasmin, who has been in numerous screaming bouts before, whether with her father or Harper (who is on the receiving end of Yasmin’s spiky mood in this episode). He tries to use her family’s tainted reputation to bring his wife to heel, but Yas holds all the cards due to the clause in their pre-nup about his drug use. Earlier, Henry told Yas she could sleep with other people, which she now reads as a clumsy, calculated move due to an adultery clause. He cowers in the corner of the room, looking even smaller than he did earlier when Yas threatens to hit him. Instead, she grabs him by the balls to emphasize her point about drugs castrating him.
Paranoia is another side effect, and the camera’s often unsteady journey throughout the opulent setting adds to the fracturing of reality whenever Henry is onscreen. Candlelight and twinkling Christmas decorations add to the otherworldly visuals, amplifying the stately homes’ grandiose patina. Kay and Down turn the sprawling location into a Kubrickian nightmare, throwing in technical and thematic nods to Barry Lyndon, A Clockwork Orange, and The Shining. One of these is Henry playing Purcell’s “Funeral Of Queen Mary” on the harpsichord, which Kubrick used in Orange. (The moog version was in the credits last week.) This piece of music also accompanies Henry’s solo walk home across the fields as he prepares to take his own life.
Cutting from Henry in the same position at the harpsichord in his robe to dressed for his meeting with Whitney, as if someone clicked their fingers, is as destabilizing for us as it is for Henry. Industry excels at distorting or compressing time. It is something that comes up later when Henry’s memories overlap with the present, as he watches his father’s suicide, standing alongside his childhood self. Like Jack Torrance in The Shining, Henry is haunted by ghosts.
While I didn’t catch it on first viewing, watching any of the scenes back when Henry is interacting with the Commander (Jack Farthing) makes it clear that no one else can see this hallucinated version of Henry’s father. But Henry is so wasted that no one questions his chatting to thin air. Tight close-ups ensure we are as focused on the Commander as Henry is. The coincidental encounter with the parish priest (played by Roy Sampson), who not only married Henry’s parents but also buried Henry’s father, leads to one of the most haunting and poignant sequences in the series so far. Rather than the Bible, the priest recites a passage from Cormac McCarthy’s All The Pretty Horses. His Scottish accent adds an extra emotional punch to what looks like a self-fulfilling prophecy: “The first person the coward deserts is himself. Courage ceases to be courage if it wavers. We choose to be ruined rather than change.”
But Henry doesn’t die by suicide, and those words are to offer comfort in the dark. Hearing Yasmin’s voice saying his name is his savior, and Henry has a renewed sense of purpose and libido. He will take Whitney’s job offer, and everything is looking up for the Mucks. Henry’s bloody hands from the pub brawl are not a turnoff for Yasmin; she kissed the broken knuckles and left the blood on her lips. Rather than a Lady Macbeth “out damned spot” moment, Yas keeps this unorthodox lipstick until a gleeful Henry says they should have a baby. Only then does she subtly lick it clean. Motherhood is not the purpose she seeks.
Stray observations
- • The J.M.W. Turner painting that catches Whitney’s eye is “Fishermen At Sea” and has the distinction of being Turner’s first exhibited work. It is part of the Tate collection.
- • Harper turns down Whitney’s offer for a repeat of last week’s hookup. The most obvious reason is that the call from a journalist to look into Tender means Harper no longer wants to mix business with pleasure.
- • The party theme with Yasmin decked out as Marie Antoinette and the majority of the other guests going all in on the finery of pre-revolutionary French attire (without any hint of irony) shows that nothing has been taken from that historical cautionary tale beyond sartorial taste and Dionysian pleasure. Jenny Bevan doesn’t partake in the dress code at all, and Harper’s look is corseted but contemporary.
- • Kay and Down beautifully capture Dyrham Park’s grand exterior, pointing to why this location is a TV and movie favorite, with Doctor Who, Remains Of The Day, The Pursuit Of Love, and Sanditon taking advantage of its impressive architecture and rolling hills.
- • “Oh, grow up. I’ve never voted. What fucking difference would my vote make?” remarks Yasmin. Maybe not the best thing for a former politician’s wife to admit, but it definitely tracks.
- • Part of the joy of watching British general-election results comes from some inventive independent party names and costumes. Take Count Binface, who is vying for the same Wakefield constituency MP seat as Henry. The only part of this that is a work of fiction is that Count Binface didn’t run in Wakefield but in Uxbridge and South Ruislip in 2018, and I have strong memories of seeing Count Binface among the other candidates that year.
Emma Fraser is a contributor to The A.V. Club.
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