‘Industry’ Emmy Snub: Prestige TV Is a Moniker Series Are Born with but Rarely Earn — Opinion

What is "awards-worthy" has become a self-selective brand that leaves little room for young showrunners and for series that grow into greatness.

Getting up in arms about Emmy snubs is a fool’s errand. In a year in which 510 scripted TV shows were submitted for primetime Emmy consideration across more than 100 categories, the series attracting the Academy’s eyeballs have a decided advantage: name recognition and effective awards positioning help steer the vote in a sea of unseen TV.

HBO is arguably the best at this — a smart awards team working with excellent programming, which on Wednesday received 122 nominations, more than any other network or streamer.

One thing HBO has in its favor — and why Paramount would be insane to mess with it after the acquisition of Warner Media is completed — is branding. The era of so-called prestige TV was born out of the premium cable service’s Sunday night programming in the early 2000s. It’s a well-earned reputation for quality, the product of its notoriously rigorous development process, that over time filters out flawed programs and untangles the kinks in those that survive it. It’s a process that produces high production values, impeccable casting, and non-formulaic storytelling that hasn’t been dulled down in an effort to reach the widest possible audience.

It’s an awards-friendly brand that HBO series are born with when they premiere, and for those shows that live up to the high expectations, they often see their awards prospects increase over the course of their run, like HBO Max’s “The Pitt” Season 2 and “Hacks” Season 5 demonstrated, racking up 25 and 24 nominations respectively.

Against the backdrop of HBO’s banner Emmy nomination morning, many were surprised “Industry” was completely shut out, receiving zero nominations. The fourth season of HBO’s UK-based show had a handful of key factors working in its awards favor:

• Season 4 was one of the very best-reviewed series on TV this season, receiving an 87 on Metacritic, higher than “The Pitt” and Emmy breakout “Widow’s Bay,” and tied with “Hacks” and “Pluribus.”
• Season 4’s storylines were especially topical, exploring the intersection of power and money to unearth the rationalization for autocracy, and laying bare the death of journalism’s ability to pierce through corruption, all while backdooring a Ghislaine Maxwell-inspired gut-punch ending at the exact moment headlines were dominated by the names of the rich and powerful appearing in the Epstein files.
• Season 4 had strong, category-specific campaigns across a dozen categories, especially for actor Ken Leung’s performance in one of the most talked-about episodes this year.
• HBO put its weight behind an awards campaign backed by its young, rising stars, Marisa Abela and Myha’la.

Aren’t these the necessary ingredients for Emmy nominations? It’s understandable why many fans and pundits were left baffled, but I would argue the Emmys’ “Industry” exclusion was not an outlier in an otherwise banner day for HBO’s awards team, but rather the exception that proves the rule.

When “Industry” premiered in 2020, it lacked the same prestige moniker as other HBO-nominated series.

It was the product of a time when Warner Media’s new corporate owners, AT&T, were trying to increase the number of shows on streamer HBO Max. “Industry” was the cheapest show on HBO’s lineup, a price tag that could justify its low ratings and initial lackluster acclaim. While “Succession” spared no expense bringing viewers behind the scenes of the lives of the rich and powerful, “Industry” was set in the London financial world, but saved money by shooting in Wales.

Although the pilot episode ended with the suicide of a main character, unable to handle the extreme pressures to keep his entry level job into the world of high finance — a heady opening storyline, for sure — what “Industry” Season 1 promised and marketed to audiences was the frenetic energy of its young cast of characters fucking, getting high, dancing, back-stabbing, and firing off witty one-liners in response to cutthroat trading-room-floor antics.

Whereas becoming an HBO creator was an upper-echelon status that showrunners spend their careers aspiring to, “Industry” co-creators Mickey Downs and Konrad Kay were young and inexperienced, their only major credential being that they lived the Oxford-education-to-high-finance life of their characters. As Kay and Downs told IndieWire, HBO itself saw the upstart TV creators as unpolished talent with a quick ear for dialogue and a sharp eye for detail, but with no idea of how to structure a season of TV. Down and Kay themselves mocked some of the amateur story decisions they made in Seasons 1 and 2, which often painted them into a corner.

One of the joys of “Industry” has been watching Kay and Down grow into masterful showrunners in Seasons 3 and 4, taking full advantage of their gifted cast, which was supplemented by an all-star team of guest stars. HBO, well aware that their young prospects were ready to be promoted to the big leagues, moved Seasons 3 and 4 to its vaunted Sunday night lineup. And as you’d expect, ratings and reviews went up; tastemakers in the media took note, including a coveted deep-dive New Yorker profile, as word of mouth gave birth to a passionate weekly audience that devoured and dissected every line like it was “Sopranos” or “Mad Men.”

So why was the Academy then slow to hop on the “Industry” bandwagon? It’s simply not how it’s built. Undoubtedly, there are Academy members, like IndieWire readers and writers, who clocked “Industry” becoming a great show, but not enough to move the needle. In the sea of unseen TV and tens of thousands of Hollywood professionals voting on nominations, the trajectory of “Industry” doesn’t quite fit the awards season model.

When a hundred new series are culled through by Academy members deciding what to watch during Emmy campaigns, “Industry” Season 4 was automatically dismissed as a non-awards title — branding that is hard to shake. Awards are a self-selective game, studios and talent deciding ahead of time if a series or movie is something they will position and invest in campaigning, giving it the “awards title” branding. What’s fascinating about HBO’s inability to successfully pivot “Industry” into the awards conversation is how it demonstrates that “prestige TV” — practically a genre unto itself — becomes a label impossible to add in later seasons, regardless of a show’s quality.

In essence, the awards community is not unlike the English social hierarchy “Industry” portrays: high status is something you are born with, not something that can be earned. As Sir Henry Muck — a disgraced member of the nobility, played by guest star and HBO awards alum Kit Harrington — tells his upstart, whip-smart CFO Whitney Halberstram (Max Minghella), “You’re a fucking peasant. I’d rather die as me than run as you.” An apt analogy for awards season.