Cory Stillman
Is it too early to anoint the best show of 2026?
Probably, but just over a week into this new year, HBO’s Industry has returned with a fiery fourth season that will stand as a force to be reckoned with all year long.
By the time the third season concluded in 2024, Industry already felt like one of TV’s best kept secrets. Fans of the show knew they were watching one of the best programs on television, while outsiders maintained only a vague awareness of the show and its whole deal.
“Oh, the one about British investment bankers who have a lot of sex?”
Indeed, Industry S4 features more sex and debauchery from Harper, Yasmin, and the whole gang, but series co-creators Konrad Kay and Mickey Down have done something quite special with this fourth season, which premieres on HBO this Sunday, January 11th.
The destruction of Pierpoint as we once knew it at the end of S3 was a ballsy creative decision that surely signaled major change ahead, and the loss of such a distinct dramatic container could have cratered a lesser show. But Kay and Down clearly understand the world they have created, taking cues from corporate thrillers like Michael Clayton and The Insider in setting up a high-stakes game of cat and mouse between faces both familiar and new.
Those newcomers include Max Minghella as Whitney Halberstram, the American CFO of payment processor Tender, as well as Kiernan Shipka as his assistant Hayley. Stranger Things star Charlie Heaton joins the cast as an enterprising journalist, and Ted Lasso actor Toheeb Jimoh is a notable addition as Kwabena Bannerman, who forms a charming pair with his co-worker Sweetpea Golightly (Miriam Petche), newly elevated to a series regular.
Every returnee is at the top of their game in S4, even if certain characters are left with a little less to do amidst this season’s taut thriller trappings. Eric Tao (Ken Leung) feels the most lost within his new surroundings, but his reunion with Harper (Myha’la) is still amongst the most intriguing relationships on television, as is the troubled romance between Yasmin (Marisa Abela) and her aristocrat husband Henry (Kit Harrington).
Black Bag star Abela continues to be a particular standout amongst this talented cast, and while it is hard not to feel the absence of her on-and-off lover Robert in the wake of actor Harry Lawtey’s departure from the show, Yasmin’s arc remains as unpredictable as ever, and it is through her that Konrad and Down riff on more genres than just the financial thriller at its core. Episode two of this new season is a clever spin on those typically stuffy British costume dramas, and the back half of the season embraces its erotic thriller identity head-on. For good measure, a midseason bender takes fan-favorite Rishi (Sagar Radia) on a high-octane overnight odyssey in the vein of After Hours or Good Time, and arguably the season’s best episode is a globetrotting buddy-comedy-cum-spy-movie featuring Kwabena and Sweetpea.
Of course, Industry is ultimately a show about Yasmin and Harper, two ambitious young women who have allowed the personal to all too uncomfortably infiltrate the professional, poisoning whatever amount of money is in their pockets, no matter where it comes from or how it was acquired. The fragile friends may no longer work together, but their paths remain intertwined in Industry‘s most tense season yet, one that manages to ground itself in relevant British and global politics, even as it plays in the genre sandboxes its creators so clearly admire. There has always been a legitimate sense of danger hovering over the obsession these characters have with the dollar signs and data points that flash before their eyes – just ask Rishi, whose tragic end in S3 segues into increasingly shocking if also satisfying directions in S4 – but this fourth season draws several stunning throughlines between such peril and the political reality in which viewers may find themselves.
A show that had already developed a knack for reinvention has now evolved once more, and audiences are better off for it. Is it finally time for Industry to break out into the mainstream and receive the recognition it has long deserved? Or perhaps clued-in audience members are lucky enough to remain the safekeepers of the best secret in television, entitled to pretend we understand all that financial jargon delivered like it is Shakespeare, and prepared to advocate for why the show’s most salacious moments are actually quite important.
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