IF I’D SEEN THIS I WOULDN’T HAVE BEEN A VIRGIN AT 32
SEX in a nightclub toilet, full-frontal male nudity and a lesbian assault in a taxi — and that was just episode one.
Further instalments of Industry, the BBC’s brand-spanking-new drama, showed: interracial sex, gay sex, threesomes and kitchen sink sex (that is, literally sex in the kitchen sink). When it came to this series, set in the world of graduates making their way in high finance, I think the only thing we didn’t see was spanking. Blimey!
When I was in my teens and early 20s — what’s now known as Generation Z or, given what I’ve just binge-watched, Generation XXX — the only vaguely erotic television available was Bouquet Of Barbed Wire.
The year was 1976, and it was aired on LWT, of course, as in those days the BBC only ventured as far as Irene’s chaste love for Soames in The Forsyte Saga.
For a glimpse of a young male body, I had to sneak into the Odeon to see Enter The Dragon, certificate 18, and behold Bruce Lee’s bare torso.
No wonder sex remained a mystery, terrifying and off-limits, meaning I remained a virgin until I was 32. Oh, how I would gorge on Industry were I a 20-something today.
Young people, despite Covid, their imprisonment on campus, debt, unemployment and no prospect of ever buying a house, have never had it so good!
Even the less attractive characters in this series simply ooze confidence from every shiny pore.
And it’s the women who are the revelation: predatory, direct, ambitious. True, they confuse owning a smart phone with having a personality but, hell, why wasn’t I more entitled?
In my day, women could only succeed in a male-dominated workplace if we were the first to arrive and the last to leave, and never complained, cried or challenged the patriarchy. Well, not any more!
These girls ask men out, and demand positions in bed and on the board, pay rises and orgasms in equal measure
But is all this prime-time bonking actually sexy? Yes, and it’s funny, too
I admit I was a little shocked, 11 minutes
into episode one, when Harper — our young, black, female protagonist — bares her erect nipples to a man watching her on FaceTime.
There’s no romance, no waiting for him to ask her out. They just get on with it.
But despite the bravado, there’s a vulnerability to the characters. Will I be sacked, demoted, sidelined? The man you’re having virtual sex with switches you off mid-flow, with no warning. Your boyfriend is next to you in bed, ‘enjoying’ porn on his phone.
Parents should also watch this drama, as they’d realise their brittle teen is like creme brulee: soft underneath. Meanwhile, the older characters — including a predatory lesbian played by Sarah Parish — make me wonder: do young people really see us like this? Not as mentors, but as sad has-beens who still talk on the phone with a, you know, voice. There’s no deference. But maybe we don’t deserve it.
Of course, the dialogue is clunky, the acting a little Grange Hill. But I prefer Industry to Normal People, which pretended to be art but baulked at the more controversial aspects of the book. Here, women rule the roost.
Would I want my teenage daughter, if I had one (and I might have had one, had I not been so terrified of men), watching it? Yes, yes, yes!
She’d learn her sexuality is nothing to be afraid of. That men are not an unknowable species. Forget #MeToo. This is #MeFirst.
Industry is a co-production with HBO, which gave us Sex And The City; the C-word, so shocking back then, is now as commonplace as Uber and Deliveroo. The young women here are Samantha Jones’s grandchildren, high-flying on her fabulous coat tails.
Should the BBC be exposing us, literally, to something tantamount to glossy, prime-time porn?
Again, yes, yes, yes! This isn’t about chasing viewers. Young people need an outlet, especially now many can no longer go into the office, let alone bars. Sex for them is as vital as breathing, or food.
Think of Industry as PPE for the soul. It’s probably the only thing keeping the lid on the virus among the under-25s. Boris should give whoever commissioned it a knighthood.