Statistics chief complains to BBC over impersonation of staff in hit drama Industry
ONS tells broadcaster that depiction risks undermining interviewers’ ‘delicate relationship’ with the public
Best known for its depiction of City traders as drug-addled, sex-crazed adrenaline junkies, the BBC hit series Industry has unexpectedly attracted criticism for its portrayal of doorstep data collectors.
The head of the Office for National Statistics has written to the BBC criticising a recent episode in which characters falsely impersonate ONS employees on someone’s doorstep.
Darren Tierney, the permanent secretary of the ONS, the UK’s statistics agency, warned the storyline risked undermining the “delicate relationship” between its field interviewers and the public – a relationship already under strain since the Covid pandemic heightened concerns about fraud and the sharing of personal data.
Each month, the ONS sends interviewers to thousands of households across the UK to help gather information used in official statistics, such as employment and spending data.
“They do so with dedication, professionalism, and often under challenging conditions. Their ability to perform this work safely depends on a foundation of trust,” Tierney wrote in his letter to Tim Davie, the outgoing director general of the BBC.
He added that staff had “expressed distress” that this trust might have been “inadvertently compromised” by the BBC episode.
It is understood, however, that no member of the public has so far mentioned the episode of Industry specifically to the statistics body, however.
The TV series Industry, which is produced by HBO and airs on the BBC, follows the lives of a group of young investment bankers in London as they compete to rise up the ranks of their sector. Over four series, starting in late 2020, it has become a huge hit in the UK and the US.
The incident, which appears in episode three of the latest series, shows the characters Sweetpea Golightly and Harper Stern impersonating ONS field agents in Sunderland to access the home of someone they believe is inadvertently helping a company to defraud its investors and customers.
The ONS said its interviewers send a letter before any house visit and carry a photo identification card with an “authority number” that can be checked with an ONS helpline.
Tierney has invited Davie and the BBC to meet its interviewers and look at the “challenging and vital work they do”.
The fashion choices in Industry have also been attacked. In a blogpost accompanying Tierney’s letter, the ONS said that, while its field agents were allowed to choose their work attire, it was “unlikely they’ll turn up on your doorstep, as the impostors do in Industry, looking like a flight attendant”.
The letter comes as the ONS faces scrutiny over the quality of its statistics, after problems with the accuracy of data including employment, GDP and inflation figures, which experts previously said left policymakers “flying blind”.
The “deep-seated” problems have partly been caused by overstretched resources as well as sharp declines in survey responses.
Some City economists expressed surprise at the ONS’s attack on Industry, arguing that the show did not depict anyone in a particularly good light.
Simon French, the chief economist at the investment bank Panmure Liberum, said: “If that is Darren’s major issue with Industry, he has been focusing on the wrong bits … Can I write a letter saying that City workers are worried that BBC is portraying us all as sex-mad, drug-peddling sociopaths?”
The BBC declined to comment.