Simon Ridgway/HBO
“Isn’t it lucky that no one’s ever satisfied?” says Eric Tao, played by Ken Leung, to junior colleagues Harper Stern (Myha’la Herrold) and Rishi Ramdani (Sagar Radia) before bursting into laughter in Industry season two.
This cynical yet gleeful observation might as well be the tagline for the HBO television series, which returns on August 1, about a group of mostly young, hyper-competitive and horny bankers working in the London office of the fictional Pierpoint & Co.
If you savored the complete chaos of Industry’s first season, you might be wondering what else the finance drama—full of graphic sex, drug use and violence of all kinds—has left to showcase in its second round. But as Pierpoint’s terrifying managing director of Cross Product Sales suggests, there’s always more cash to gain, co-workers to undermine, clients to sleep with, and ketamine to snort in the corrupt world of finance. And unlike an equally sensational show like Euphoria, the series’ writers and creators Mickey Down and Konrad Kay have an interest in examining power and pleasure beneath all these pearl-clutching moments.