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.

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 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.

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.

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.

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

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