I can’t exactly say I saw this coming. Max obviously wanted something to replace House of the Dragon on Sunday nights, and the prime spot has gone to Industry, the Succession-lite finance drama about cutthroat traders, now back for its third season.
While the show has always been well-liked by critics, Industry’s third season has arrived with actually perfect 100% scores on Rotten Tomatoes, and currently, with very few audience reviews in, a perfect 100% score there too (I cannot imagine that persists, but still). Here’s what the scores look like across the three seasons now that the apparent best season to date has arrived:
- Industry Season 1 – 76% critic scores, 51% audience score
- Industry Season 2- 96% critic score, 52% audience score
- Industry Season 2 – 100% critic score, 100% audience
That is…very interesting. I am not going to put too much weight on the audience scores here as both previous seasons have just 100 or so reviews in, and the season now has 50. But clearly it’s a show critics like a lot.
What Industry is not, however, is widely watched. Ratings so far have been between 0.08 and 0.12. That is…not very high, and this is just not one of Max/HBO’s most popular series. However, clearly they see something in it as we are now in the third season. If there is anything to compare it to it would be Succession, full of high-power corporate maneuvering and unredeemable characters. But personally, I don’t think it’s a fraction as good and I really have not like it to date. Though I did watch two full seasons, somehow, so I guess there was something there. Other critics, however, maintain it’s great.
Speaking of House of the Dragon and Game of Thrones, in season 3 here Kit Harington, Jon Snow himself, is joining the cast. He’s a character named “Henry Muck”(??). He is a knighted, extremely wealthy Brit with “unusual sexual tastes.” He’s the CEO of a “trendy green-tech energy company that ends up ripping off its customers.”
Turns out it was Harington’s idea to join the show, and the series leapt at getting such a big name on board with its cast of relative unknowns. He didn’t even have to audition which actually freaked Harington out a bit, as expectations were then pretty high.
The first episode of season 3 of Industry aired last night, and we’ll see how it does this season. I wonder how many episodes these 100%-scoring critics had access to, if that’s just for a part of the season or the whole thing. I would not expect these double 100% scores to continue over the long term, but still, it’s a very impressive start here.
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