Here are the perfect streaming shows for HBO Max right now.
1. Doctor Who
Doctor Who is a long-running British series that follows the exploits of Time Lord and his companion as they journey through space and time in the TARDIS. Doctor Who may be a little cheesy, but it’s also one of those shows that it’s hard not to get absolutely involved in when you launch. Viewers who do not even consider themselves a science-fiction geek should give it a try, since this may be the show that transforms them. It’s not just a science-fiction film, it’s a series about love and heartbreak and isolation, the coming of age, about humanity and loss. Perhaps more than that, watching Doctor Who’s not just a television experience, he’s a cultural one, one of the few shows capable of integrating people around the globe.
2. Love Life
Over the years, Anna Kendrick has played a lot of characters who have trouble seeking love, but the HBO Max flagship scripted Love Life series is uniquely consumed with her marital woes. Every episode of the executive series produced by Paul Feig is zero in one of Darby’s (Kendrick’s) relationships as a young single woman living in New York City. Describing the show as “Millennial Women and the City” is a little reductive, and it also undercuts the charms of Kendrick’s success and the idea that promises an anthology-style format, each season concentrating on a different protagonist. This means that Love Live is going to skip the worst part of a romantic comedy TV show — every season will have a happy ending.
3. Westworld
Fans waited two years for the third season of this fabulous Western science-fiction and dystopian series featuring a futuristic Wild West-themed amusement park named Westworld. Despite appearing and behaving convincingly normal, the people who work there are simply hosts trained to have unique personalities and abilities and to adapt to any visitor’s wish, whether to meet and lay down with a pretty woman or get trapped in a gunfight. The first season and the entire plot was influenced by the 1973 Michael Crichton movie of the same name. However, the second, and particularly the third, seasons are very different from the first. Each one is similarly captivating and fast-paced, keeping the plot continuously refreshed.
4. The Office U.K.
What can we tell about the genre-defining workplace sitcom that hasn’t been saying before? The mockery of Ricky Gervais has inspired some of the finest works on film, and unlike its numerous predecessors, it remains the best example of what a fine, mundane comedy series can do. Gervais as incompetent manager David Brent, whose vain efforts to communicate with his underlings is a frustrating exercise in futility. Martin Freeman is also a stand-out, playing a part that John Krasinski inhabited in the American remake, but it is the British sarcasm that truly lifts this series and makes it deserving of a watch.
5. The Wire
Before you heard this, the wire is HBO’s finest work ever. David Simon’s Baltimore drama has received a host of critical accolades and cover-ups over its five seasons, but it was unusual to have a weak appreciation and seasonal malaise. It’s clear to see that this is considered both imaginative and nuanced. The team of Avon Barksdale and the detectives were given the role of investigating them after the first season. The Wire reverses the anthology-style to represent other controversies in the community from the docks to the Town Hall and to address controversial proposals, such as the Drug Legalization Scheme in Season 3. All in The Wire is connected to politics, law, drugs, race, and crime, and they all converge with the characters Avon, Stringer Bell, McNulty, Greggs, Bunny, Bunk, and, of course, Omar.
6. Silicon Valley
Silicon Valley, the center of the early culture in the world of the show, came from the brilliant mind of Mike Judge — a term for Beavis and Butthead and King of the Hill. Judge says the series is pseudo-inspired by events in his life as a Silicon Valley entrepreneur in the late 1980s. The show follows a multitude of programmers and businessmen seeking to make it a competitive world for technological start-ups (albeit comic). Perhaps the most fun part is that all the lead characters are unfit to succeed, which gives the show a very humanizing viewpoint that is not often influenced by current sitcoms. Silicon Valley’s writings are keen, and the effects are smart and timely, making this not only one of HBO’s best comedies but one of the best shows on the network.
7. Sharp Objects
Sharp Objects, Gillian Flynn’s best-selling novel, is the best method of slow-burning. The 8 episode limited series star Amy Adams (Arrival, Enchanted) is a Camille Parker, a disgusted journalist who has just been released from a mental hospital to investigate the murder of two teenage girls in her hometown, Wind Gap, Missouri. Her mother Adora (Patricia Clarkson), who drives her to confront some of her personal demons, welcomes her with less than open arms. As Camille finds answers to these horrific murders, she learns information that she wished to delete from her experience, which results in a story that is so bleak as it is hypocritical.
8. The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air
If you want to know the story of how Will Smith became the Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, watch this classic ’90s sitcom starring the now A-list Hollywood hero. Smith stars like Will, a young man who, as the famous theme song suggests, is sent to live with his rich aunt and uncle after he gets into a basketball court battle. His mother, concerned about her son growing up in a poor Philadelphia neighborhood, determines that this is the best chance for him to have a better life. Of course, the dichotomy between Will of Philly and Uncle Phil with his castle, butler, and stuck-up children leads to a lot of conflicts between family members. It’s six seasons of sheer entertainment, along with the trademark moral lessons at the end of every episode that characterized the ’90s sitcoms.
9. Succession
With two seasons under the belt and many Emmy awards, including the Outstanding Drama Series, Succession has already become one of HBO’s most successful new series. Waystar Royco is a multinational media and hospitality empire headed by the cruel Logan Roy. When he approaches retirement age and experiences a health failure, he must look to his wealthy and well-off children to find a replacement. But who of his four children, from an arrogant playboy to a power-hungry and imaginative addict, is really ready and worthy? And would Logan ever be able to hand over the reins? The issue of who’s going to take over hovers over every episode as the corporation, Logan, and the Roy family indulge in dirty tricks, flaunt their money, and find themselves continually entangled in controversy.
10. The Thick of It
There’s more to enjoy about this British political comedy than just Peter Capaldi’s epic meltdown, which appears to be tailor-made for these quarantine times. The show — created by Veep genius Armando Iannucci — brings a lot of the same government-based comedy as his American successor, but with a decidedly English twist. The series follows the everyday occurrence of the fictitious Department of Social Affairs and Citizenship, a sort of government branch with a turbulent minister (played by Chris Langham) overseen by Capaldi’s stern, rule-following enforcer, Malcolm Tucker. If you enjoyed Veep and Parks and Rec, but you think, “Man, they need more British sarcasm in here,” this one is for you.
11. The Big Bang Theory
This sitcom concluded after 12 effective seasons in 2019, and HBO allegedly paid $425 million on exclusive rights to the CBS program. You can catch up next season and replay the social development of four nerdy friends after becoming friends with the beautiful waitress and ambitious actor next door and expanding their isolated community. The cast was one of the top-paying TV stars in the show’s later years, each earning $1 million per episode at one point. The science jargon that overshadowed much of the complicated dialogue had little effect on the success of the series; you didn’t have to be an astrophysicist or engineer to grasp the clever comedy and enjoy the incredible chemistry among the cast members.
12. Deadwood
David Milch’s much-loved drama set in Deadwood’s Old West Community is regularly included in critics’ shortlists of the best TV shows of all time. It’s a gritty western ensemble filled with so many unforgettable roles and great stars that it looks like it’s going to be illegal. It’s also a true story, with the vast majority of the cast playing real characters, including Timothy Olyphant, the unwilling peacekeeper Seth Bullock, and Ian McShane, the villainous brothel owner Al Swearingen. The show centers on the town of Deadwood, South Dakota, and the shrinking notion of the lawless American border, pursuing Deadwood’s transformation from camp to town and ending the statehood of South Dakota. I should only waste the remainder of this blurb rattling off the amazing cast — Brad Dourif as the prickly Doc Cochran, William Sanderson as the dimmed E.B. Farnum, stressing out John Hawkes as a Bullock business associate, Sol Star, an amazing Robin Weigert as Calamity Jane, and that’s just four people.
13. Doom Patrol
The main thing to remember about DC’s Doom Patrol is that you were first introduced to Brendan Fraser’s Cliff Steele in a close-up on his bare behind, dutifully pumping away, and that’s until his dead brain was inserted into the body of a robot. Doom Patrol is perhaps the strangest thing about Warner Bros. TV has ever created a bunch of super-powered misfits who are more like a form of Suicide Squad if the Suicide Squad was bad at all. The line-up includes Fraser’s Robotman, a robot who is a guy, too. Matt Bomer’s Larry Trainor, a former pilot of the Air Force with a sentient nuclear being residing inside him. April Bowlby’s Rita Farr, a Golden Era Hollywood starlet afflicted with a mysterious illness that periodically transforms her body into The Glob. Diane Guerrero’s Mad Jane, a human with a James McAvoy, has 64 distinct identities. And Joivan Wade, like Cyborg. Like the Justice League. He’s just essentially a robot, and he’s also a guy. Doom Patrol is almost as funny as hell.
14. The Sopranos
The Sopranos is often presented as shows of very ambiguous images, from the quacking ducks to the hiking Russian gangster in the forest. And yes, a rich therapeutic version of the dream scenes and therapy sessions between Tony (James Gandolfini) and his psychiatrist Dr. Melfi (Lorraine Bracco), but David Chase’s mafia theme, eighty-seven episodes in the period 1999 to the close of Bush, is still full of places on the surface: the sound of Little Carmine, coining a new malapropism, and Soprano wakes up and finds his eyes. You may not know them, but you know their kindness and their laughter. These are the people you know about. As the series circle, the gravitational force created by the brilliance of Gandolfini’s leading performances, this violent corner in New Jersey is a bizarre, calming place for the side characters, covering the horribly tragic Adriana La Cerva and the completely disgusting Ralph Cifaretto.
15. South Park
In addition to Friends, one of the major streaming snags of HBO Max was the whole South Park catalog. The controversial animated show about four friends growing up in South Park, Colorado, has now been broadcast on Comedy Central for 23 seasons, covering more than 300 episodes. The show has often attracted criticism — and often reflects on taboo topics in a manner that can make viewers uncomfortable — but it often remains one of the best satires on tv, also acting as a considerable asset as opposed to safer airwaves series.
