Well-behaved women seldom make history and frankly, they make terrible TV. If you, like me, cannot resist a thrilling workplace drama, you’ll be more than acquainted with all-round awful characters – but less familiar with ‘bad women’.
My introduction to unlikeable female characters took shape in How To Get Away With Murder’s Annalise Keating (played by Viola Davis). For those who haven’t had the pleasure of watching the legal drama, Annalise is a badass defence attorney who I’m convinced could save the world with her courtroom jargon.
Outside the courtroom, however, she is cold, distant and prideful. I love her. Writing a flawed character that still makes viewers empathetic is hard, so I always chalked up the brilliance of Annalise to the genius of showrunner Shonda Rhimes.That is until Konrad Kay and Mickey Down took us to the Pierpoint trading floor, Red Bull in hand.
and HBO drama, Industry, has been compared to telly royalty including, Succession, Mad Men, Billions and Skins. I’ll admit, every comparison is fairly accurate – just pick a few ingredients from each show – coke, dysfunctional relationships, sex, corruption – and voila you have Industry.
Like some of its predecessors, the financial drama tussles with dense themes; from the British class system to sexism and racism. Led by Myha’la Herrold, it follows the journey of five graduates battling for permanent positions at top investment bank Pierpoint and Co.
Harper Stern pulls no punches and it’s refreshing to see (Image: HBO/BBC)
When we meet our lead, Harper Stern (Myha’la), she seems out of place and sympathetic. But within a few episodes, we see that she’s right at home – worse, she knows how to play the industry game and win.
At the end of Season One, Harper is faced with a decision that could change the company’s toxic culture of consistent verbal abuse and inhumane working hours. But, in a twist that still haunts me, she pushes against it because the change would leave her with less power. I was shocked.
Film and TV have trained us to find ‘redeemable’ qualities in female characters. We see this mentality in action in Season Two.
Harper strikes up a sexual relationship with newcomer Dan and one day she is particularly dismissive of him. He tries to figure out why and when he discovers she had been sexually assaulted by a client as a first-year graduate, he suddenly feels like he cracked the code: she’s traumatised, and that’s why she behaves like this.
But Kay and Down prove early in the series that they aren’t interested in reducing Harper to a woman scorned. She, like the men at Pierpoint, is deeply flawed and selfish and that’s the end of the story.
Marisa Abela and Myha’la as lead characters Harper and Yasmin (Image: HBO/BBC)
Throughout the first series, she speaks highly of her brother who, according to her, unexpectedly ran away to Berlin. So, when presented with the opportunity to visit Berlin she jumps on board planning to find her brother. She does, but it doesn’t go down as I expected. I’ll admit, I expected this to be monumental for the character, I thought we would see a whole new side of Harper. She would finally be vindicated.
Wrong. Harper’s estranged brother, John, is not happy to see her. He tries to dodge spending time with her but eventually settles for taking her to the club and getting high, breaking his six-month sobriety.
When Harper finally asks the all-important question ‘Why did you leave?’ John explains that he escaped because of their domineering mother but he does not absolve his sister. Instead, he likens her to their mum and calls her selfish. According to him, Harper was instrumental in pushing him beyond his capacity as a tennis player.
It was in this episode that it dawned on me that Harper is a bad woman and although that has led to fans of the show hating the character – I love her for it. In her family, friendships and romantic relationships (if we can even call them that), she is callous and self-centred. These traits are undesirable in anyone, but society has labelled them especially awful in women.
In an, Kay shared that the first season intended to ‘seduce’ viewers into ‘expecting Harper to do the right thing at the end, before confounding expectations.’ While the writers certainly achieve this, I think half of the battle was won by the countless one-dimensional female characters in mainstream TV – as viewers, we have already been seduced into expecting lead women to do the right thing. While the writers may not have purposefully set out to subvert gender representation with Harper, they do a cracking job at it.
If we examine our favourite ‘bad women’ on TV, most of them (see Phoebe Waller-Bridge’s Fleabag) seem to have a buffer that justifies their character. In Fleabag, it’s the trauma of losing her best friend and her terrible upbringing.
Harper Stern needs no excuse. Watching her make every bad decision in the book is a real pleasure.
Industry Season 3 is available on iPlayer from October 1