Mickey Down makes ambition interesting when it has to share an office with friendship. His work with Konrad Kay on Industry earns our attention, though the sex and excess too often interrupt the sharper business of getting ahead.
Fi1m perspective
In Industry (2020), being liked by a colleague can be difficult to separate from getting ahead. Mickey Down and Konrad Kay build their workplace drama around young bankers who have to judge people they may also want as friends. We found that uncertainty uncomfortable, because a friendly relationship does not remove the possibility of rivalry. The writing gives us reasons to stay interested in people whose ambitions might otherwise wear us out. Down is worth following for this attention to how people behave at work.
His partnership with Kay predates the series: they co-wrote and co-directed the black comedy Gregor (2014). Down then wrote for You, Me and the Apocalypse (2015), before developing Industry with Kay. His brief career in investment banking helps explain the setting, but knowing the job would not, by itself, make the programme worth watching. The useful knowledge is about colleagues, and how difficult they can be to read.
Down began directing Industry in its third series, with the final block of episodes, and he and Kay have increasingly directed as a team. Their writing has also moved beyond the autobiographical material that informed the first series. Kay deserves equal weight in any account of what makes the programme work. The writing we admire is theirs together, particularly when friendship and professional self-interest complicate the same decision. Their growing involvement behind the camera should not obscure how much the performances do to hold our attention.
The reservation is how often the programme leaves its more interesting business for sex and after-hours excess. Those passages are less reliable than the office politics, and they sometimes crowd out the writing that makes the bankers worth our time. We do not need these characters to behave better; we need the distractions to justify taking us away from their working day. The abrasive tone suits a drama in which liking someone does not settle what to think of them. Start with Industry, provided workplace manoeuvring is enough of an attraction to carry you through the interruptions.
Biography
Mickey Down is a British writer, director and producer. He is the co-creator, with Konrad Kay, of the HBO and BBC series Industry (2020–), on which he has also served as writer, showrunner, executive producer and director.
Before entering television, Down worked in investment banking and left the industry to pursue screenwriting. He met Kay at Oxford University. Their earlier credits include the 2014 feature Gregor, which they co-wrote and co-directed, and an episode of the 2015 miniseries You, Me and the Apocalypse.
