There are signs from the start that this season of Industry might be a bit different to the two before. We're on a yacht in the Mediterranean, so the budget has been bumped from the trading-floor confines of season one.
Then, Kit Harington from Game of Thrones walks into shot, playing a silver-spooned green-tech CEO with the nominative-determinist name Henry Muck.
Then there are the deaths – plural – this season. We won't spoil any of them. They're accompanied by spiritual deaths. Since David Jonsson has been jettisoned into outer space to do battle with rogue aliens, Gus is gone with a throwaway line of dialogue. Other Pierpoint casualties soon follow him out the door.
Some things stay the same. There's graphic sex from the off, involving Yasmin's scumbag dad and a heavily pregnant, much younger member of his staff – although a certain segment of this has been edited out from the HBO transmission to maintain our national broadcaster's modesty.
There are cracking lines of dialogue as well as much finance-speak. The jargon feels all the more impenetrable this season because we're several instalments in and still haven't learned what seemingly simple words like "yard", "cable" and "long" actually mean.
This one is worth getting to grips with: "ESG", which means Environmental, Social and Governance. Huh? Ethical investing. Pierpoint's got into making "socially responsible" investments, less out of moral goodness and more because that's where the money is, for now.
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It's where Harington and his swole, spoiled brat Henry comes in, heading up a company to put the world to rights.
Marisa Abela's Yasmin takes the lion's share of things to do this season, as she's hounded by Mr Muck, red-top paparazzi and her dad's creditors after he goes missing. Myha'la's sociopathic Harper is on the back burner doing menial tasks for a girlboss investor, since being out-manoeuvred by Eric (Ken Leung), who's having a drawn-out midlife breakdown and doing hard drugs for the first time since 9/11 (his words).
Rob (Harry Lawtey) is still playing out a battle for his soul on the peripheries of the show. Salty-language MVP Rishi (Sagar Radia) gets another call-sheet bump this season, which includes an Uncut Gems-style standalone episode.
If it's not clear, each of the eight episodes is rammed with plot, superbly executed by this big ensemble cast. Co-creators Konrad Kay and Mickey Down – who fled the world of investment banking to reveal all its ills on TV – ratchet up the tension to such a degree that scenes often play out with the momentum of season finales.
The BBC show, which could have previously been mistaken for a brand collaboration between Euphoria and Goldman Sachs, is trying to make good on its fledging Succession comparisons.
There's the yacht. Then there's a Pierpoint away day to Switzerland. There are echoes of real-world events – namely, Liz Truss's disastrous Tory budget – and there's even a select committee, which HBO's social-media accounts purposefully compared to Cousin Greg's buffoonish congressional testimony when the episode aired in the US.
There's also much more political manoeuvring, through a shadowy cabal attached to Henry Muck – as whom Harington is brilliant, milking all of his pseudo-humble posh-boy lines and weaponised therapy-speak.
Yet this toxic-masc elite is where the prestige comparison falls short. There are hammy private-club scenes of old-fashioned establishment types swilling port and smoking cigars in between bouts of directing the future of the country and mocking Jeffrey Epstein's island for being new-money tacky.
This leads to an ayahuasca-induced dream sequence we would have been no worse without.
The banal evil of such moments in Succession is lost here in favour of outright diabolical cackles. But when it's not belaboring the born-to-rule social commentary, Industry's character work is as good as ever.
This is a first-rate, relentless season of television. BBC and HBO's having bestowed a fourth season – before the show has even aired in the UK – is a solid vote of confidence from two tastemakers in TV.
Industry returns to BBC One and iPlayer on October 1.
Previously Deputy TV Editor at Digital Spy and, before that, a TV Reporter at The Mirror, Rebecca can now be found crafting expert analysis of the TV landscape, when she's not talking on the BBC or Times Radio about everything from the latest season of Bridgerton or The White Lotus to whatever chaos is unfolding in the various Love Island villas. When she's not bingeing a boxset, in-the-wild sightings of Rebecca have included stints on the National TV Awards and BAFTAs red carpets, and post-match video explainers of the reality TV we're all watching.
