Forget ‘Suits,’ HBO Max’s Twisty New Legal Thriller Is Officially a Global Hit

Published Oct 11, 2026, 7:45 PM EDT

Denis is a news writer for Collider with close to five years of experience in the industry. He has analyzed shows across different genres, formats and styles. His favorite types of articles to write are exciting news updates and episodic deep-dives. He might say he doesn't have a favorite show, but he has watched The Wire, Shameless, The Big Bang Theory, and The Blacklist more than once. Denis is increasingly becoming focused on the global streaming arena and how media connects with audiences in various markets. Find him on X tweeting about something random that occurred to him about a TV show or the industry in general.

For the last several weeks, HBO Max has been dominated by sci-fi shows. The DC smash-hit sci-fi thriller Lanterns has been the most popular show on the streamer and is still holding on strong a week after its season finale. The Big Bang Theory's sci-fi spin-off Stuart Fails to Save the Universe has also been a streaming favorite, consistently ranking second on HBO Max over the last several weeks. The other sci-fi hit is Rick & Morty's spin-off, President Curtis, which has now dropped from the chart following its season finale two weeks ago. However, sci-fi's dominance is about to end, thanks to a new legal thriller that is quickly climbing streaming charts.

Think of this show as a love-child of a messed-up affair between Showtime's hit drama The Affair and USA Network's legal thriller, Suits. It explores a high-profile marriage on the verge of collapsing, but it doesn't stop there. On the other side is a team of lawyers handling the case for both parties, and if the couple is vengeful, the lawyers are even worse. That series is War, the British drama created by George Kay and starring The Affair lead Dominic West alongside Sienna Miller.

The series is set in modern-day London and follows some of the city's most powerful people, as well as those around the world. West plays Morgan Henderson, a billionaire married to Miller's Carla Duval, an A-list actress. Their marriage is marred by betrayal and distrust, and when it reaches a breaking point, lawyers from two firms, Cathcarts & Sons and Taylor & Byrne, want to be the ones to decide how massive the fallout is, and they'll stop at nothing to secure victory for their clients. After just one episode, the series has been an explosive success, ranked third on HBO Max at the time of writing. It will undoubtedly rise even higher as new episodes of the eight-episode first season debut on Thursdays.

Collider Exclusive · 8 Questions · 2 Minutes Which Iconic Romance Is Your Favorite? Harry & Sally · Love & Basketball · Heated Rivalry · Titanic

Four great love stories, and four completely different ideas of what love actually is. One is a friendship that took twelve years to admit itself. One is two people who refuse to stop competing. One happens entirely behind closed doors. And one lasts five days and never stops mattering. Eight questions decide which one is really yours.

🍂Harry & Sally(1989)

🏀Love & Basketball(2000)

🏒Heated Rivalry(HBO Max)

🚢Titanic(1997)

FIND YOUR ROMANCE →

How does your love story start? The first scene tells you what kind of story this is going to be.

AWe are friends for years before either of us says anything. BWe want the same thing and neither of us backs down. CNobody can know, including our closest friends. DOne look across a room and everything changes.

NEXT QUESTION →

What do the two of you keep arguing about? Every great romance has one fight it has over and over.

AWhether this is actually happening, and what to call it. BWhose career comes first this year. CWhether we will ever be honest about this in public. DNothing small. When we fight, it is about everything.

NEXT QUESTION →

How do you show somebody that you love them? Grand gestures are easy to write. This is the harder question.

AI remember every single thing they have told me. BI show up to the things that matter to them. CI keep their secrets like they are my own. DI would give up something enormous for them.

NEXT QUESTION →

What is actually standing in the way? There is always something. Which something tells you the genre.

ATiming. We keep finding each other at the wrong moment. BAmbition. We both want big lives and they do not match. CThe world. It is not safe to be open about this yet. DEverybody around us has decided this cannot happen.

NEXT QUESTION →

Which romantic moment gets you every single time? Be honest. There is one that works on you and you know which.

ASomebody running across a city to say it before midnight. BSomebody in the stands who stayed until the very end. CA look across a crowded room that nobody else catches. DSomebody promising to hold on, and meaning it.

NEXT QUESTION →

What would you actually risk for the right person? Every romance asks this. Most people find out far too late.

AA friendship I could never get back. BThe plan I have had for my life since I was a kid. CMy privacy. All of it would become public. DEverything. I would not think about it for long.

NEXT QUESTION →

Where are the two of you in ten years? Some love stories are about the meeting. Some are about the staying.

AStill talking. We have never run out of things to say. BBuilding something together, both of us still ambitious. CFinally open about it, after years of being careful. DApart, and I still think about it constantly.

NEXT QUESTION →

Which of these sounds most like something you would say? Eight questions in, this is the one that decides your romance.

AI would rather talk to you than anybody else, forever. BI am not giving up either of us. We find a way to have both. CThis is mine, and I am not explaining it to anyone. DI would do the whole thing again, even knowing how it ends.

REVEAL MY ROMANCE →

Roll The Credits Your Romance Is…

Four love stories, four completely different ideas of what it means to be somebody's person. This is the one that matches how you actually fall, and what it would ask of you.

Harry & Sally

You do not fall for strangers. You fall for the person you have already been talking to for years, which is the slowest and by some distance the most durable way anybody has found to do this.

When Harry Met Sally made the case that the best romance is an argument you enjoy, conducted over a decade, by two people refusing to admit what is happening.
You want to be known rather than swept away. Somebody who remembers your worst story is doing better work than anybody arriving with flowers.
The film is unusually honest about timing. These two are wrong for each other repeatedly until suddenly they are not, and neither of them engineered it.
You would still be talking about everything at eighty. That is the entire promise.

Love & Basketball

You want a partner, not an audience. Somebody who wants their own life as badly as you want yours, and who would never ask you to be smaller to make the relationship easier.

This is the rare romance where both people have a real career and the film takes both of them equally seriously.
You would rather be pushed than protected. The right person for you is also a bit of a rival, and that never entirely goes away.
It understands the actual problem in ambitious relationships. Not whether you love each other, but whose turn it is this year.
You would still be competing at forty. That is how you would know it was working.

Heated Rivalry

The intensity was never the problem. The secrecy is. You are drawn to a love that lives entirely in private, and to the particular ache of wanting somebody you are not supposed to want.

Heated Rivalry runs on the oldest engine in romance: two people on opposite sides, meeting in secret, getting far more attached than either of them planned.
You keep your private life genuinely private, and something in you finds hidden things more real than public ones.
The tension is not only between the two of them. It is between what they have and what it would cost either one to say it out loud.
Years of this, and the whole story is really about whether either of them will finally stop hiding.

Titanic

You do not do this cautiously. When it happens for you it is immediate and total and it rearranges everything, and you would not accept a smaller version of it.

Titanic gave us the biggest romance in film history and then made it last about five days, which is precisely the point of it.
You measure love by intensity rather than duration. A few days of the real thing beats decades of something merely comfortable.
The film is not only about the romance. It is about a woman who went on to live an enormous life afterwards because of it.
You would still be telling this story at a hundred years old, and telling it exactly the same way.

↻ RETAKE THE QUIZ

What Do Critics Have to Say About 'War?'

Professional critics have had mixed reactions to the series, but reviews have been generally positive. The season is rated fresh at 83% on Rotten Tomatoes. War can be broadly categorized as a show about rich people, and there have been numerous examples in the past two decades, so some critics are not hot about it. Collider's Victoria Luxford called the rich people drama a "vicarious thrill," but ultimately found the show too shallow. ScreenRant's Dani Kessel Odom thoroughly enjoyed the show, calling it "Shakespearan." Variety's Aramide Tinubu was also impressed, describing the show as "thoroughly captivating."

New episodes of War stream on HBO Max on Thursdays. Stay tuned to Collider for more updates.

Release Date October 1, 2026

Network HBO

Directors Ben Taylor

What Do Critics Have to Say About 'War?'

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