How did Industry get so good?

Five years ago in these pages, I dismissed HBO’s Industry as an oversexed and often inscrutable take on the lives of London’s investment bankers. Three seasons and 32 episodes later, the show is indisputably one of the best dramas on TV. If, as co-creator Konrad Kay recently told the New Yorker, the series’s pilot was “the second-least-watched show” in HBO history, then the story of that growth involves much executive patience. But there is another angle, too. Kay and writing partner Mickey Down have always been evocative dialogists and plotters. The difference now is that they have learned which direction to point it. 

The show’s fourth and latest outing is anchored by characters Harper Stern (Myha’la) and Yasmin Kara-Hanani (Marisa Abela), two ensemblists who have emerged