You’re watching ‘Industry’ wrong

There’s a lot of great dialogue in Industry. But if you aren’t watching with subtitles on, you’re missing out on the best of it.

The financial HBO show is on its third season of mess and drama perpetrated by employees at the fictional investment bank Pierpoint & Co., and it finally got bumped up to the prime Sunday night spot. Mashable’s Belen Edwards praised Season 3’s experimentation, writing, “that atmosphere of high-risk, high-reward decision-making, complemented by high-risk, high-reward television-making, makes watching Industry a high of its own. It’s brutal, it’s intoxicating, and it’s never been better,” in her Season 3 review.

Among the zingers featured in Sunday’s episode’s audible dialogue:

“I’ll just let other people call you a posh cunt behind your back,” Rob (Harry Lawtey) lobs at manchild and Lumi founder Henry (Kit Harington) moments before they tussle in Lumi’s ball pit.

“Do we have a jacket in the office?” a nervy Henry asks his assistant. “No, you implemented a no-jacket policy,” she replies.

“You are the godmother to fucking Boadicea,” a livid Anna (Elena Saurel) snaps at Petra (Sarah Goldberg), her partner at FutureDawn, her ESG start-up. 

If you love this stuff you can hear upon first watch, you’re going to have a feast with your eyes when you turn closed captions on.

In an interview with The Watch podcast in 2020, Industry co-creator Konrad Kay explained that the show’s sound design encourages the use of closed captions. “[When we were designing it, we said] it has to be loud, it has to be oppressive. HBO was like, people are not going to be able to hear your dialogue…you cannot start an HBO drama with a disclaimer, ‘Please turn on the closed captioning otherwise you won’t enjoy it,'” said Kay. Despite HBO’s concerns, Kay and his co-creator Mickey Down went full speed ahead with their atypical approach. 

The financial drama makes the case for closed captions with its breakneck-speed conversations in a variety of accents, some more legible than others. (Rob has a particular mumble-grunt delivery that has me rewinding and reaching for closed captions.) And the talk often features more financial jargon than is healthy for the average person’s consumption. But closed captions also reveal hidden gems. The tool picks up what human ears might not: the hilarious background dialogue.

Rishi (Sagar Radia) talking some shit out of the side of his mouth on the desk? Closed captions have you covered. A group of people seemingly out of earshot murmuring about the inevitable chaos? It’s all written there on the bottom of your screen. The reactions after Gus (David Jonsson) says something peculiar and the camera follows him out of the room? I think you know the answer. 

As one X user wrote, “hey @TheEmmys you need to create a category for background dialogue so the #IndustryHBO writers room can get their flowers.” The post captioned a series of screenshots from last week’s episode, including some truly wild remarks about Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce — as always, Industry is endlessly relevant. Author Daniel José Older also tweeted, “you must watch #Industry with the captions on. Even if you’re fluent in Assorted British, do it for the murmured background convos which are consistently amazing.”

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Tweet may have been deleted

In the The Watch interview, Down explained that they wrote an entire script of automated dialogue replacement (ADR) — the industry term for background noise — per episode. While the co-creators worried that they included too much ADR, Down emphasized its role in creating Pierpoint’s realistic open-concept office and undercutting the tense scenes of the show with humor. 

As Season 3 gains viewership thanks to its primetime HBO Sunday night spot, the fandom for the show’s gimmick also grows. On X, despite streaming services blocking screenshots due to copyright concerns, fans manage to screenshot and swap stills of their favorite ADR moments. The show’s subreddit features threads of appreciation for the entertaining background noise. Over on YouTube, a compilation of Rishi’s best moments, consisting of almost entirely off-camera one-liners (with subtitles already added) racked up nearly 200,000 views. 

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All-timers include this off-camera exchange between Greg (​​Ben Lloyd-Hughes) and Rishi:

“I just think, you know, if I had biceps like that…with the vein running down through it, that, that bulge, you know…”

“Like Zac Efron?”

“Yeah, the Zac Efron.”

“The Zefron.”

“Yeah, I know I should be thinking about other things, like the suicide rate among men my age or whatever…”

And there are dozens of such cases you too could be privy to. 

The outrageous background dialogue not only adds humor to the show, but it postitions the viewer right in the middle of the overwhelming world of Pierpoint. No wonder our favorite guys in finance can’t think straight. If I was hearing Rishi’s constant chatter, I, too, might make my fair share of awful decisions. 

Be sure to turn those closed captions on for the full Pierpoint experience. And if you haven’t been doing this the whole time, it might be worth a rewatch to pick up on all the background goodness. 

Industry Season 3 releases new episodes weekly at 9 p.m. ET on Sundays on HBO and Max.