TRADING PLACES

The ex-bankers behind HBO's "Industry" are the latest British élites to dramatize their own kind.

- BY REBECCA MEAD

Konrad Kay and Mickey Down, the creators of "Industry," have been friends ever since meeting at Oxford University, where they focussed more on going out than on studying.

Clwb Ifor Bach, a night club in Cardiff, the capital of Wales, is the kind of venue whose sticky floors hold generational memories of first intoxications. One evening in July, about a hundred young people lined up outside—girls in crop tops and short skirts, boys in baggy pants and tees. Once admitted, they gathered in knots on the dance floor, holding drinks in plastic cups. This was not a typical night out, though: the assembled had responded to a casting call and were about to be extras in a charged scene for Season 4 of “Industry,” the HBO drama about the world of finance and associated realms of power.