Myha'la plays Harper, a state-school outsider who lands at Pierpoint & Co and learns that cocaine and Excel are the only currencies that matter. The trading-floor fluorescent lights never switch off, so the graduates snort lines in toilet stalls, swap desks for bedrooms, and wake to find their P&L is their only identity. Marisa Abela’s privileged Yasmin and Ken Leung’s ferocious MD Eric orbit Harper in a system where friendship is arbitrage and loyalty is a short position.
Series two opens with the pandemic gold-rush; Jesse Bloom, a hedge-fund shark in Nike sweats, turns Harper into his personal dealer of inside information. By series three the action has left the glass tower for a green-energy startup, Lumi, where Kit Harington’s shambolic aristocrat CEO flogs carbon credits and family trauma in equal measure. The camera glides from parliamentary select committees to Mayfair dinner tables where a single leaked WhatsApp can wipe a billion off a balance sheet.
Former bankers Mickey Down and Konrad Kay write every humiliation they remember: the 3 a.m. pitchbooks, the MD who keeps a valium drawer, the intern who gets fired for yawning. Cardiff doubles for London, but the dialogue is pure Canary Wharf, a patter of book value, basis points and casual cruelty that critics called the missing link between Succession and Euphoria. The fourth season sits at 88 on Metacritic, the highest score yet, proof that the closer the show gets to the bone, the more blood it draws.
Production Details
HBO / 4 Seasons / 32 Episodes / 2020 - Present
Created by: Mickey Down, Konrad Kay
Showrunner(s): Lachlan MacKinnon, Lena Dunham, Ben Irving
Writer(s): Konrad Kay, Mickey Down, Joseph Charlton
Producer(s): Lee Thomas Edoardo Ferretti Dan Kay Flynn MacDonell
Cinematography: Federico Cesca, Arthur Mulhern
Main Cast
Myha'la as Harper Stern
Marisa Abela as Yasmin Kara-Hanani
Ken Leung as Eric Tao
Harry Lawtey as Robert Spearing
Sagar Radia as Rishi Ramdani
David Jonsson as Gus Sackey
Conor MacNeill as Kenny Kilbane
Kit Harington as Henry Muck
Miriam Petche as Sweetpea Golightly
Sarah Parish as Nicole Craig
Caoilfhionn Dunne as Jackie Walsh
Irfan Shamji as Anraj Chabra
