Konrad Kay’s work with Mickey Down makes office relationships tense enough to sustain a series. We rate Industry for its uncertain friendships and abrasive ambition, though its appetite for after-hours excess can interrupt the better drama.
Fi1m perspective
A colleague in Industry (2020) may be a friend, a rival or someone whose approval matters rather more than it should. Konrad Kay and Mickey Down make that uncertainty the basis of an abrasive workplace drama, and it is their strongest material. We felt uneasy watching those friendships, because the wish to be liked kept complicating decisions about whom to trust. The young bankers are worth following even if banking holds little appeal.
The partnership began on screen with Gregor (2014), which they wrote and co-directed, before their own experience in finance supplied material for Industry. The series gives ambitious young graduates a workplace in which getting on with someone and getting ahead can become the same problem. Kay began directing episodes in the third series, having already helped create and write the programme. That distinction matters: his clearest achievement here is shared with Down, in the way they write people who cannot keep their private needs out of professional decisions.
The sex and excess are less persuasive. When the programme moves away from office politics, it too often interrupts more interesting business to attend to the characters’ appetites. Kay and Down have themselves described the early work as driven more by mood than by firm storytelling, and that is a useful admission. The performances hold our attention, but they do not make every detour equally rewarding.
Across successive series, the pair have expanded beyond the trading floor and changed the programme’s tone and structure. They also avoid telling us which characters to condemn, which leaves us to decide how much ambition we can excuse. More settings will not necessarily improve that, and the office already gives them plenty to work with. Start with Industry for its workplace relationships, with patience for the after-hours interruptions.
Biography
Konrad Kay is a British screenwriter, director and producer. With writing partner Mickey Down, he created the HBO and BBC series Industry (2020–), on which he has also served as writer, director and executive producer.
The pair met while studying at the University of Oxford. Both subsequently worked in investment banking in London before leaving to pursue screenwriting. Their first feature, the micro-budget comedy Gregor (2014), which they wrote and directed, was funded via Kickstarter and nominated for a British Independent Film Award Discovery Award.
Kay and Down have written and directed multiple episodes of Industry across its seasons and signed an overall deal with HBO.
