Trading in rough diamonds

Investing in start-up potential is risky, but Bad Wolf’s Jane Tranter helped Industry duo Mickey Down and Konrad Kay become valuable market assets. They recall their journey together and talk about why TV should be backing new talent.

The series tagline ‘Everyone is collateral’ hints at the kind of cutthroat, risk-versus-reward power plays the characters of HBO’s high-finance drama Industry engage in on the trading floor of fictional London investment bank Pierpoint & Co.

Staffed by ruthlessly ambitious young bankers and the borderline abusive senior executives who mentor them, it’s a frequently toxic workplace where double-crossing colleagues is a necessary evil en route to closing a lucrative multimillion-pound deal.

“It’s about power – who has it and who wants it,” says Konrad Kay, who co-created the show with creative partner Mickey Down.

Down adds: “The show is seen through the lens of go-getters striving to make a success of themselves. We’re writing about a black-book industry which controls vast swathes of our life and economy, without many people really understanding how it actually works. It’s the bedrock of a lot of things in this country in a very shady way.”

The aspirational drive of the young characters in Industry is very much reflected in the men who dreamed them up. Kay and Down’s stratospheric rise to prominence in the world of big US studio scripted drama was achieved through indefatigable determination, precocious talent and – by their own admission – often delusional self-belief.

They met at Oxford University and both pursued careers in finance upon graduation. Down worked as an intern in private wealth management at a big US institution, while Kay cut his teeth in equity sales. Within three years, however, both were “spat out” by the sector and instead pursued careers as TV and film writers.

The early years provided slim pickings. They worked in storylining for the David Hasselhoff-fronted reality TV series Hoff the Record, which aired on UKTV’s Dave channel in 2015, while also pitching various other projects, sometimes commissioned but rarely going into production.

They didn’t give up, though, and it was while working on a film concept at Sony Pictures-backed Bad Wolf (His Dark Materials) that the two friends came to the attention of the prodco’s co-founder and co-CEO Jane Tranter. The former BBC controller of fiction had been mulling over a series set in the ecosystem of investment banking when a colleague mentioned that two staffers were uniquely placed to help realise that vision.

“I wanted to do something about the generation who had lived through the 2008 crash and still wanted to go and work in the City,” says Tranter, speaking alongside Konrad and Down at the Edinburgh TV Festival, which recently hosted an Industry Masterclass panel session. “I was floundering around until Mickey and Konrad told me that it’s the thing they’d been wanting to write about for ages.

“We were in a lucky position as I’d just come back from working in LA for a period of time and HBO had a very small investment in Bad Wolf. They asked us to make whatever we wanted for a low cost. I told them about Industry and that I wanted to make it with new talent. HBO told us to go for it.”

It’s only with the benefit of hindsight, and considering the current global commissioning crisis, that Tranter now acknowledges how smoothly the process went through.

“At the time it seemed like an organic development and I took it for granted,” she says. “But now, in 2024, I realise how precious a thing it was because TV drama commissions are the stuff of dreams, particularly now so much less is being made on both sides of the Atlantic and it’s harder to get work by new voices done.”

Tranter says the most cherished quality Kay and Down brought to Industry was their “authenticity of experience.” Still, the two young writers weren’t given an easy ride and found themselves thrashing out a staggering 85 drafts of the pilot script alone. Initially offering up teleplays that were almost documentarian in their forensic commitment to detailing the minutiae of everyday life on a trading floor, their early submissions were ultra-credible but labelled “boring” by HBO chairman and CEO Casey Bloys.

“That first draft was like a flat line on a heart monitor,” remembers Tranter, who serves as executive producer on Industry. “It wasn’t right at all, but it had the most distinctive voice and strong visceral tonality. I told HBO that if they gave me three years, Micky and Konrad would be the best showrunners they could have – though actually it took around eight years.”

Kay, Down and the Bad Wolf team spent two years developing Industry before it finally got a greenlight and went into production, with the first season debuting in November 2020 on both HBO and BBC Two in the UK.

Featuring a large ensemble cast of mostly unknown young actors, it stars Myha’la (Bodies Bodies Bodies) as Harper Stern, a driven New Yorker assigned to the Cross Product Sales desk at Pierpoint, alongside Marisa Abela (Back to Black) as posh girl Yasmin Kara-Hanani and Harry Lawtey (Marcella) as drug-hoovering Oxford alumnus Robert Spearing. All three play recent graduates competing for permanent jobs at Pierpoint and hoping to avoid the dreaded reduction-in-force staff cull.

While the first season attracted generally favourable reviews and cult viewer fandom, Industry really hit its stride in its sophomore run. Actor and filmmaker Jay Duplass was cast as American hedge fund manager Jesse Bloom, a morally ambiguous character who earned fortunes from other people’s misery during the Covid pandemic, while Sarah Parish (Cutting It) played prized Pierpoint client Nicole Craig, who was sexually inappropriate with both Robert and new recruit Venetia Berens (Indy Lewis).

“The major question of the show is: is it possible to be a good person within this space?” says Down. “Can you actually invest in a way that makes the world a better place while still making money? Industry presents both sides of the argument but ultimately it has a take on it – that it probably started off from a position of altruism before being corrupted by the players within it.”

That theme has been expanded upon yet more in season three, which is currently underway on HBO in the US and is set to debut on BBC One and BBC iPlayer on October 1. Game of Thrones star Kit Harrington is a high-profile cast addition, playing Henry Muck, the manipulative CEO of green-tech energy company Lumi, while Pierpoint pivots to embrace ethical investing.

“For season three we wanted to broaden the canvas and throw everything at the wall in a way we never did in the first two seasons,” says Down. “Through this green energy company going to market, we wanted to show how finance sits within the larger ecosystem of politics, the media and how it all works.

“We wanted to write about the culture of start-up companies through a particularly British lens, not the Silicon Valley version of it.”

As the tone and identity of Industry has progressed, so have Kay and Down’s writing chops. While early episodes were slow paced and often full of impenetrable finance jargon, the co-creators are now fully committed to keeping things zippy and more accessible.

“It’s been suggested that Industry is designed for people with TikTok brains and short attention spans,” says Kay. “We just feel that’s the most compelling way to do it. People ask us about the themes and characters, but making Industry entertaining is literally all we care about when we’re writing.”

Down adds: “The worst thing a TV show can do is tread water – why shouldn’t every episode feel like a season finale?”

To that end, the co-creators have never been shy of stunning their fans with shocking plot twists. The final episode of season two saw Harper fired from Pierpoint by her mentor Eric (Ken Leung), while season three sees the sudden death of a major character and Down hints that episode four is “super traumatic and intense.”

Kay says: “Micky and I are both big fans of [Breaking Bad creator] Vince Gilligan, who says that if you burn all your best ideas you might then have the challenge of writing your way out of it, which is even more fun.”

Tranter notes: “One of the things I absolutely dread to hear from a writer is ‘…but we’ll save that for the final episode.’ Play that card now. Back yourself into a corner because there’ll be no shortage of good ideas later on. They won’t run out.”

Over the course of their eight-year journey with Industry, Kay and Down have become genuine TV multi-hyphenates, not only creating and writing the show, but also taking on further responsibilities as executive producers, showrunners and now directors.

The duo say that being tasked with an expanded overall remit has improved both their creative and commercial instincts. Industry now employs a writers room full of young and diverse young voices, freeing up Kay and Down to spend more time behind the camera or exec producing.

“We have a weird telekinetic, symbiotic type of relationship,” says Kay. “We EP the show but never delegate to each other. Some days Micky will be talking to the editors and I’ll just be by the monitor. Other days, one of us will be off producing the show, while the other directs a couple of scenes – there’s never a big holistic conversation about it.

“Neither of us think we’re splitting the atom. We don’t want an environment that feels stressful or antagonistic. The whole thing is fun, fantastic and joyful.”

While they don’t take themselves too seriously, Hollywood is certainly convinced of their talents. Both are currently working on a number of original commissions in the US. And during a generally bleak time for the TV content community worldwide, Tranter believes Down and Kay’s story should be seen as a beacon of hope for ambitious young creatives looking to break into an ever-shrinking sector.

“In a really short period of time, Mickey and Konrad have conquered TV,” she says. “That won’t be everyone’s journey, but I think it’s very inspiring to know that it’s possible. When the industry is contracting and going through a crazy difficult time, we need to remind commissioners and broadcasters that new writing doesn’t have to be marginalised. It can occupy the mainstream if you give people the chance.

“Mickey and Konrad started as writers, then became very good EPs and directors. This is what we should be doing to keep the ecology of our industry fresh and percolated.”

tagged in: Bad Wolf, BBC, HBO, Industry, Jane Tranter, Konrad Kay, Mickey Down