When I was little, children’s media was really big on revealing that behind the guy you thought was the villain usually stood an even bigger, scarier villain. Darth Vader had the Emperor. Skeletor had Hordak. Gargamel had Balthazar. Cobra Commander had an immortal half-human, half-snake guy called Golobulus, voiced by Burgess Meredith. No mater how bad you thought a bad guy was, there was always someone worse.

Anyway, remember last week, when Eric exploded at Harper for taking advantage of a vulnerable friend to further her own career? That was the Emperor calling Darth Vader black. 

I reviewed this week’s episode of Industry for Decider.

Turns out there are more horrifying things to see than a decomposing corpse. A lonely middle-aged man, fabricating some kind of emotional connection with his much younger employee entirely in his head, then firing her hours after she rejects his clumsy romantic/sexual advances. That same young woman, too stunned by the prospect of a life without her awful father that she fails to stop the boat rapidly speeding away from his floundering form in the Mediterranean, guaranteeing his death. That young woman’s best friend, reacting to the news that criminally negligent homicide has been committed and needs to be covered up the way you might respond to getting tickets to the Oscars. That same friend turning on the young woman in the end, unable to face the fact that every terrible thing she’s saying about her is true. This week’s episode of Industry is an emotional abattoir, one that reminds me of the tagline for the original Texas Chain Saw Massacre: Who will survive this season, and what will be left of them?

I reviewed this week’s awesome Industry for Decider.

“This is the one situation where I get to control my helplessness.” I didn’t expect Sir Henry Muck, of all people, to crack the code for the way Industry uses sex to explore its characters interior lives, but there you have it. Henry says this in the context of finally asking Yasmin to urinate on him — please note that he’s “no pervert”; instead of some elaborate production where he gets down on his knees and she stands over his face or whatever, he just has her pee on his leg, then acts as if he’s caught in the video for “Here Comes the Rain Again.” But he could be speaking for almost anyone on the show. Sex is where you can choose to dominate or be dominated, for your own pleasure, instead of having these roles forced on you by external circumstance by a world driven not by pleasure but money, money at all costs. No wonder they all fuck and fetishize like rabbits with Fetlife accounts. 

I reviewed this week’s episode of Industry for Decider.

When was the last time you watched an episode of television that made you clap your hands and cheer at the end? It’s been a minute for me, I must say, and I watch a lot of television. A lot of really good television, even! But there’s something special about “White Mischief,” the fourth episode of Industry’s Industry-standard terrific third season. Written by series creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay and directed with breathless panache by Zoé Whittock, it is both a showcase for the prodigious talent of Sagar Radia and for everything this show does well, which is, at this point, pretty much everything.

I reviewed this week’s episode of Industry, one of the best hours of television I’ve ever watched, for Decider.

This is is as good a time as any to say the obvious: Myha’la and Marisa Abela are absolutely fucking outstanding as Harper and Yasmin, and they have been from the start. In part this is down to smart casting. Putting “a diminutive woman,” as both Otto and myself have called her, into the role of your leading sociopath is a deft bit of sleight-of-hand, while Abela has the kind of beauty that’s both striking and somehow approachable, both of which are key components of her job as it’s been constructed.

But it’s raw talent, too. That wolfish grin on Myha’la’s face as she brings Eric to heel, then lightens the mood by observing the glitter all over his face! The way Abela can change Yasmin from a woman who hates herself for missing her abusive father to a woman who can make powerful men beg for her favor using just the cast of her eyes! Coupled with the ferocity of the show’s stance against the personal and political hypocrisy and abusiveness of everyone involved, and the two actors are like samurai wielding their swords so efficiently you don’t even notice you’ve been sliced in two. 

I reviewed this week’s Industry for Decider.

All you need is one hour. 

Less than an hour, actually. 51 minutes: That’s how long it will take you to watch the first episode of Industry, HBO/Max’s buzzy series about sex, drugs, friendship, money, life, and death among the young sharks of London’s financial industry. And that’s all you’ll need to decide whether Industry, one of the smartest and sexiest on television right now, is for you. 

I know, I know, the show is currently in the middle of its third season, and that kind of time commitment can be intimidating. But this isn’t one of those “it starts getting good in Season 2” kind of shows, where you have to sink in several full work days to make it worth watching. Far from it. Everything that makes the show great is present right there in the pilot, and the show only gets better from there. 

So it’s simple. If you like the pilot, you’ll like Industry; if you don’t, you won’t. It’s the lowest bar to entry of any prestige TV drama currently on the air — and as far as prestige TV dramas go, Industry is as good as it gets. And don’t worry: We won’t spoil any major twists or surprises as we explain why.

I gave Industry, one of the best shows on the air and a real sleeper until this season, the hard sell for Decider.

Industry is not an easy show to cover. Oh, it’s an absolute pleasure to watch — gorgeous to look at, a cast bristling with talent, gripping financial-thriller storylines, and the proverbial Strong Sexual Content we all know love. And it’s equally pleasurable to think about, to discuss, to pull apart and piece back together. You could unpack Eric’s feelings about Harper, or Yasmin’s sexual personae, or the show’s whole bitter commentary on capitalism with someone over drinks for an hour. (I don’t even wanna think about how long you could go with cocaine.)

But it isn’t easy to write about, for the simple reason that, well, it’s too good. There’s so much stuff going on, and so much of that stuff is so rich and attention-demanding, that it’s hard to know where to begin. Often I’ll hit this point with shows I really like fairly deep into a season or a run, reaching a point where all I can do is rattle off a list of superlatives. I’m now on my second review of Industry ever, and I feel as though I’ve hit that point already. Where do we go from here? I swear I’m going to limit this kind of meta self-referential nonsense in future reviews of Industry as much as I can, but after this episode? Come on. 

I reviewed this week’s episode of Industry for Decider.

The Sopranos, but more bitingly cynical. Euphoria, but with more and better sex and drugs. Mr. Robot, but there’s no hackers. Mad Men, but you flash forward six decades to discover basically nothing has changed. Succession, but with characters who sound like humans instead of lab rats in some kind of inventive-swearing experiment. Industry, Mickey Down and Konrad Kay’s remarkable workplace drama set in the atavistic world of London finance, feels like many shows at once; somehow, the whole is more than the sum of its parts. 

I am so thrilled to be covering Industry for Decider this season, starting with my review of the season premiere. It’s a show I slept on for way too long. It’s not too late!

9. Interview With the Vampire

“Home Is Where You’re Happy” by Charles Manson

“Look, Charlie Manson wrote a couple of beautiful songs. Still, he was Charlie Manson.” Controversial, Daniel Molloy! The conductor of this vampire drama’s titular interview, played by Eric Bogosian, has very little patience for the bloodsucker in question, Louis de Pointe du Lac, and even less for Louis’s psychotic, pubescent protégé, the teenage vampire Claudia. It’s her Molloy compares to Manson, the cult leader who defined the death of the Age of Aquarius … and much to my everlasting surprise, it’s Manson who soundtracks the end of this episode. Molloy is right: Manson could be a talented songwriter in very limited doses, as his buoyant ode to personal freedom, “Home Is Where You’re Happy,” makes clear. It’s just hard to hear that happiness when you recall the fate of Sharon Tate, which is what makes the song a strong choice for the soundtrack of a show about magnetic mass murderers, even when they’re of the supernatural variety.

I wrote about ten of the best uses of popular music on TV this year for Vulture.