George Kay’s HBO legal drama turns a celebrity split into the most addictive show of the fall.
War is the most fun I have had watching two people destroy a marriage. George Kay‘s eight-episode legal drama, which premieres Thursday, October 1, at 9 p.m. on HBO, takes one of the ugliest experiences most adults will ever go through and turns it into something that plays like a heist movie. It is sleek, nasty, very funny and almost impossible to stop watching. If you want the short version of this War HBO review, clear your Thursday nights.
There is a joke that sneaks up on you a few episodes in. Divorce, as War presents it, starts to look less like a tragedy and more like a sport. The lawyers are athletes. The clients are the ball. And the audience, against every better instinct, finds itself cheering for whichever side just pulled off the dirtiest trick. That is a strange feeling to have about the end of a marriage, and it is a testament to how well Kay understands what he is making.
The setup is pure tabloid gold. Morgan (Dominic West) is a tech mogul whose net worth seems to depend on who is asking and why. Carla (Sienna Miller) is his movie star wife, and she is done. In the first minutes of the premiere, Morgan goes to bed with a beautiful stranger, Flora (Rose Williams), never suspecting that Carla arranged the entire encounter to prove what she already knew. The selfie that lands in her phone the next morning is her exit ticket, and the divorce of the century is on.
What follows is less a breakup than an arms race. Carla hires Nick (James McArdle) and Serena (Phoebe Fox), the married partners behind Taylor & Byrne, a young firm with something to prove. Morgan retains St. John (Pip Torrens) and Beatrice (Nina Sosanya) of Cathcarts, an institution so old it practically has ivy growing on its letterhead.
The reaction to Carla’s honey trap tells you everything about the moral universe of the show. Her own lawyers are horrified, though not because it was cruel. They are worried about how it will look. Morgan’s lawyers are thrilled for the same reason. Nobody in this world is asking whether something is right. They are asking whether it will play in court, and whether it will play in the papers.
The honey trap will turn out to be only the first of many tricks deployed by both sides before the season is out. It is nowhere near the dirtiest.
Kay, the creator of Lupin and Hijack, has become one of the most dependable entertainers in television, and War confirms why. He is not reinventing the legal drama. He is perfecting it. Every episode is built like a clock. Every reveal arrives on time. Every cliffhanger feels earned rather than manufactured. It is the kind of storytelling discipline that is easy to take for granted until you watch a show without it.
The production design does a remarkable amount of quiet storytelling. Taylor & Byrne lives in cool glass and blue steel, all open space and ambition. Cathcarts lives in dark mahogany and old money, every scuffed table and leather chair suggesting a century of winning. Director Ben Taylor shoots both worlds with enough style to keep the eye busy without ever showing off, and he gives the show a glossy, confident look that suits its characters perfectly.
That polish extends to the writing of even the smallest roles. The paralegals and assistants at both firms are sketched with enough detail to suggest whole lives happening just outside the frame. It is a crowded show, and almost nobody in it feels like filler.
Miller and West are the marquee names, and both are cast perfectly. Miller is all effortless glamour and coiled resentment, a woman who has spent her whole life being looked at and has finally decided to look back. West plays Morgan rumpled, arrogant and oddly charming, a man who has never once been told no and seems to be enjoying the novelty. Their scenes together are few, and that is part of the design. The marriage is already over. The war is being fought by proxy.
The best material belongs to the attorneys. Fox and McArdle make Nick and Serena the warmest couple in the series, a working marriage of easy jokes and real affection that looks even better next to the frozen one they are helping to dismantle. They are the show’s heart, and they give the audience someone to root for even when they are doing indefensible things.
Across the conference table, Sosanya plays Beatrice as velvet wrapped around a blade. She is polite, precise and absolutely lethal. Miles Jupp, as her colleague David, starts out as a genteel snob and slowly reveals a lovably nerdy streak underneath. Archie Renaux is so slippery as Johnny, an ambitious junior lawyer, that he sometimes tips from opportunist into something genuinely creepy. Hating him becomes one of the show’s pleasures.
And then there is Pip Torrens, who is having the time of his life. His St. John is a bully in a bespoke suit, a man who treats intimidation like a fine art. He gets every cruel line worth having, and he delivers them with such withering contempt that you begin to understand why Morgan seems to enjoy being insulted by him. “I do love the way you talk to me with such disdain,” Morgan tells him at one point. “So refreshing.” It is hard to disagree.
War does brush up against bigger ideas. It has things to say, or at least things to gesture at, about how money warps love, about the different standards applied to a husband and a wife in a public split, and about our appetite for watching famous people tear each other apart. It even nods toward a notorious real-world celebrity breakup. There are also flickers of genuine heartbreak, especially when Carla and Morgan make halting, half-hearted attempts to call off their own lawyers, only to watch the machine they started keep grinding. Their teenage son, Gabe (Aran Murphy), is the quiet casualty at the center of it all.
None of those ideas are explored very deeply, and the show is wise enough not to pretend otherwise. War is not trying to be Marriage Story. It is trying to be the most entertaining hour on your schedule, and it succeeds.
There is one misstep, and it comes late. In the final hour, War reaches for a sentimental note about human connection that it has spent seven episodes deliberately avoiding. After so much glorious bad behavior, the sudden sincerity feels borrowed from a different show, and it does not quite land.
Thankfully, it does not last. Within minutes, the series is back on its feet, and one of its sharpest exchanges, between Nick and Serena, turns out to be one of the most romantic moments in the entire season. “We’re lawyers,” Nick reminds her. “We say things we don’t mean all the time.” Somehow, it is the sweetest line anyone says to anyone in the whole show. Love, in this world, sounds a lot like two people admitting they lie for a living.
That is the trick of War. It is a show about people at their absolute worst, and it never asks you to choose sides or to learn a lesson. It simply asks you to watch, and to enjoy how good everyone involved is at being terrible. Eight hours have rarely gone by this fast.
Who knows what a marriage really holds? War suggests it does not much matter. What matters is the story, and how well it is told. This one is told beautifully.
RATING: ★★★★☆
That’s a Wrap | War
“Sleek, nasty, wickedly funny and impossible to stop watching, the most addictive divorce on television.”
Jonathan P. Moustakas
Watch The War Trailer Below:
CREDITS:
Creator: George Kay
Director: Ben Taylor
Cast: Sienna Miller, Dominic West, Archie Renaux, Phoebe Fox, Nina Sosanya, Pip Torrens, James McArdle, Miles Jupp
Network: HBO
Premiere: Thursday, October 1, 9 p.m.
Episodes: Eight
