Is BBC’s new city drama just prime time TV porn?
Full-frontal nudity. Graphic sex. Excessive drug use. Industry is the show that claims to reveal the reality of life as a young banker. But...
WE MIGHT live in a small t own now but we are no unsophisticated provincial prudes, me and my husband. We have lived in various global cities, drunk deep of the cup of life, watched a lot of French films. So why does the graphic sex in BBC Two’s Industry so appal us?
We are enjoying the series, following the progress and interactions of five ambitious — and interestingly damaged—graduate recruit sat a London investment bank.
There are some great characters, including satisfyingly hateable bankers (insert rude word that rhymes) and bullies. The acting is great and there’s just the right mix of wit and humour, with pertinent challenging issues. The dialogue is snappy.
So you’re into all that — and then you find yourself watching one of the lead characters having full sex in a nightclub toilet with someone you’ve never seen before. My husband and I turned to each other with horrified expressions.
‘Can we fast-forward?’ asked my man of the world, a retired footballer. ‘I really don’t want to watch this.’
The problem is, it’s not just the suggestion of sex taking place — close-ups of faces, eyes closed, ecstatic moaning — it’s the full-length view, from a distance, with very unkind lighting. All the awkward limbs akimbo. It’s not sexy, it’s sordid.
And they are sprinkled through every episode, these proto-porno interfaces, each one smashing down the fourth wall like the lights coming on in a cinema in the middle of a film. It’s jarring.
We wondered if it’s our age — perhaps we just don’t ‘get it’ any more? So I asked my 18-year-old daughter to watch one episode and tell me what she thought, without giving any specific reasons why.
Her responses came via text, starting off positive: ‘This is great, I’m really interested in the City, some of my friends want to do that.’
Then the inevitable instant crush on one character: ‘I like the one who lives with the Etonian, he’s really hot.’ A pause and then this: ‘Oh yuck. Sex over FaceTime. I’m cringed.’
And her opinion didn’t improve with the subsequent sex scenes. ‘This is too real. It’s like accidentally walking in on people having sex at a party. Horrible.’ Then the comment which nailed it for me: ‘It’s unhygienic.’
Interestingly, her 20- year- old boyfriend felt the same. ‘Gross’, was his verdict.
SO, IF t he BBC has embraced this practically hardcore level of screen sex to be down with the kids who love the edgier content of streaming services — the same daughter is mad about the gory American Horror Story on Netflix, which I definitely am too old to watch — this wasn’t the way to do it.
Adding to the oddness, they have scheduled it on BBC Two. I would have been much less surprised to have found such content online, on BBC Three.
And it goes out just after 9pm — on a Tuesday, of all innocent nights — meaning that my late mum could very easily have seen this by just staying on the channel, after watching Celebrity Antiques Road Trip and Great British Menu, a thought I find deeply upsetting.
I’m sure it is an accurate portrayal of life for such young people — random sex and quite astonishingly copious drug-taking included — because the writers of the show, Konrad Kay and Mickey Down, were both Oxford graduate trainees at investment banks themselves. So I don’t blame the scripts. It’s the way
it’s filmed that is so off-putting. Way too much information.
Because the sex scenes in films and television that are most memorable are not explicit in this way. The excitement comes from the build-up, the increasing sexual tension between characters you are invested in, whose interactions you have closely followed, until that thrilling moment when their lips finally meet.
AND it can be most powerful when no consummation is actually shown on screen — just implied. That’s the great appeal of Regency dramas, all those hearts beating faster beneath Empire lines and choking cravats, while making clipped small talk. How very disappointing it would be to see Mr darcy and Elizabeth Bennet actually at it. Horrible.
If more is shared than the first kiss, screen sex is most affecting when a lot is still left to the imagination.
Because that is where good sex happens in reality, simultaneously in our bodies and in our heads, so we experience the sensations without having to witness the specific physical interplay that makes them happen.
But I will carry on watching. I want to know what happens.
I will just keep the remote handy for fast-forwarding.