HBO Max arrives in the UK with blockbusters and award-winning originals
Oh, great! Another streaming service to throw 15 of your hard-earned pounds at every month. The arrival of HBO Max UK, the platform having debuted in the US in 2020, brings with it an extra dollop of subscription fatigue, as with the myriad other streamers to arrive in recent years; what was once essentially just Netflix has become an increasingly crowded and expensive field. The difference? Max actually feels worthwhile from day dot, boasting a catalogue that is already in a class of its own, from an expansive collection of movie classics from the Warner Bros. archive to HBO's last century of prestige TV hits. For once, you won't resent opening your wallet. You might even cancel the rest.
Case in point: you've got Game of Thrones, The Sopranos and The Wire all in one place. Those alone would make for months' worth of good-value nighttime entertainment - and then you've got, like, all of the Batman movies, Golden Age staples like The Wizard of Oz, and other such must-binge-before-you-die series' like Girls. Then there are the banging newbies like The Pitt. Hence why it was a genuinely tough exercise to pick out just 7 movies and TV shows on HBO Max that you need to catch ASAP. We could have easily selected another dozen. Nevertheless, find our picks below.
One Battle After Another (2026)
It's a major flex that HBO Max has launched in the UK with this year's undisputed champion at the Oscars, with One Battle After Another taking home both Best Picture and Best Director for Paul Thomas Anderson, alongside a swathe of other statuettes. A deserved victory, as this one ranks up there with PTA's greatest work. Leo DiCaprio plays an aging anti-authoritarian whose history with a radical activist group comes back to haunt him decades later, he and his daughter (Chase Infiniti) hunted down by robotic military man Colonel Lockjaw (Sean Penn, who won Best Supporting Actor, not least for his Vince McMahon power walk). It's a timely take on American racism, with spectacular scenes and set-pieces - including the coolest, most 'how the hell did they do that' car chase in modern memory - that demand the biggest TV you have.
Sinners (2026)
Michael B. Jordan stars in Sinners.
