What's worth watching on HBO Max - from award-winning The Pitt to beloved Friends star's returning comedy

The launch of HBO Max in the UK brings with it a wave of buzzy arrivals — including award-winning medical drama The Pitt and bold new adaptation The Seduction — while also offering a chance to revisit some of the most celebrated series of recent decades.

Elsewhere, there’s a mix of big-name comebacks, cult favourites and cinematic heavyweights, from the long-awaited return of The Comeback to enduring hits such as Friends and Succession. Whether you’re after sharp satire, glossy escapism or gripping drama, these are the shows and films leading the conversation right now.

The Pitt (2025)

This highly lauded medical procedural aired in the US over a year ago and now — having already won best drama at the Emmys and Golden Globes —finally arrives in the UK with the launch of new streaming service HBO Max. With actor Noah Wyle front and centre and back in scrubs, it might appear like ER 2.0. But where that show thrived on the relationships between its doctors, The Pitt is more concerned with staff members' relationships with the system they work inside.

The structure is a case in point. Set in the emergency room of a Pittsburgh hospital, each episode covers a single hour of the same shift, a device that results in the series becoming an increasingly insistent pulse of pressures and crises, many of which are closing in on attending physician Dr Michael 'Robby' Robinavitch (Wyle).

He’s someone who, on the surface, appears battle-hardened, but it soon becomes clear that Robby is still feeling the aftershocks of the pandemic, his PTSD making its presence felt at moments of fatigue and frustration. The fact that HBO Max is launching with the first season in its entirety ensures that we’re pulled deeper into both his and the department’s unyielding orbit, though season two is set to be eked out week by week. David Brown

Friends (1994)

It’s a relic now, with TV having made efforts to move on from bright sitcoms about comfortable white people, and comedies of any kind struggling to match the global reach of the 1990s’ biggest hits. But Friends brought millions of people joy not because conditions were in its favour, but because it was so well written, constructed and performed: these six characters are six of the best in comedy history. And with 236 episodes available, it’s a treasure you can mine at will whenever you need cheering up. Jack Seale

The Seduction (2025)

Since its publication in 1782, Pierre Choderlos de Laclos’ novel Les Liaisons Dangereuses has been adapted many times, including the 1988 Stephen Frears film Dangerous Liaisons, starring Glenn Close and John Malkovich, and, just over a decade later, Cruel Intentions with Sarah Michelle Gellar and Ryan Phillippe.

This decade’s version, The Seduction, helps to launch the new streaming service HBO Max, and is a "freely adapted" prequel that places the secondary character of Madame de Rosemonde, played by German model-turned-actor Diane Kruger at the centre of the drama. Amy Raphael

The Comeback – season 3 (2026)

Rather aptly, The Comeback is making a comeback of its own. Again. Friends star Lisa Kudrow first co-created the cult HBO mockumentary way back in 2005. Following washed-up sitcom actress Valerie Cherish — wonder where Kudrow got that idea? — as she attempted to revive her TV career, it combined goofy cringe comedy with brutal Hollywood satire.

It was cancelled after one season but returned in 2014. Now comes a surprise third and final series. Valerie finds her way back onto TV in a comedy called 'How’s That?', but is shocked to find that her new show is being written by AI. It doesn’t get much more 2026 than that. Michael Hogan

Euphoria (2019)

Writer/director Sam Levinson shocked audiences with this startling and transgressive teen saga. The drama helped make stars of cast members Zendaya and Sydney Sweeney, who head up a formidable ensemble in a show that, at its best, is viscerally emotional. If you want to know what young adults are capable of thinking and doing, this show tells you, in style. You might wish you’d never asked. Jack Seale

Rooster (2026)

What with Vladimir on Netflix and now this, the rarified but emotionally tangled dynamics of the American college campus are suddenly in vogue on TV. This comedy — co-created by writer Bill Lawrence of Ted Lasso, Scrubs and Shrinking fame — is much less naughty than Vladimir, although its inciting incident is the same: a male academic is caught in a sex scandal involving a female student.

The guilty man is Archie, played by Lasso alumnus Phil Dunster, but our attention is on his wronged wife and fellow teacher Katie (Charly Clive), and her father Greg, an author who crash-lands on leafy Ludlow College to offer his daughter some semi-welcome support.

Played by Steve Carell, Greg is the ideal vehicle for an actor who has long excelled at playing nice, humble men with a wild streak waiting to be unleashed. So who’s Rooster? He’s the fictional hero of Greg’s books, a man much more charming and capable than Greg himself is in real life. But when Greg has to step up, Rooster’s energy might be just what he needs. Jack Seale

One Battle After Another (2025)

This terrific, multi-Oscar-winning film from Paul Thomas Anderson is loosely based on Thomas Pynchon's 1990 novel Vineland. Rather than a straight adaptation, the auteur expertly borrows elements and crafts them into something unique, keeping the book's rebellious spirit, absurdist comic tone and thematic weight intact.

Leonardo DiCaprio stars as Bob Ferguson, a former member of resistance group The French 75, now completely sapped of his revolutionary spirit. But when his old nemesis (Sean Penn in sensationally odious form) re-emerges, Bob must rediscover his fight so he can protect his teenage daughter (Chase Infiniti, a revelation).

The resulting chase is thrilling, uproarious and perfectly paced, with DiCaprio excelling as a frustrated layabout thrust back into the fold. Anderson stages the film's set pieces - including a mesmerising car chase - in unpredictable, inventive ways, with Jonny Greenwood's frantic, piano-led score the perfect complement.

The film feels urgent and timely, tapping into contemporary themes from the barbaric treatment of immigrants to the growing prevalence of extremist ideologies among people with influence, but there's also a dash of hope and poignancy. Anderson's choice to put a touching father/daughter relationship front and centre amid the thrills gives his masterful film undeniable emotional heft. Patrick Cremona

Sinners (2025)

Director Ryan Coogler's fifth feature is a messy, muscular mash-up of historical drama and trigger-happy horror – which just received four Oscars. It follows bootlegging brothers Smoke and Stack (both played by Michael B Jordan), who return home to Mississippi after years working for Al Capone.

With plans to set up the Delta's greatest juke joint, they recruit their young cousin Sammie (Miles Caton), a promising bluesman whose preacher father warns against playing "the devil's music". But Sammie can't resist, and it's his artistry that becomes the catalyst for the horrors that follow. Soon, silver-tongued vampire Remmick (Jack O'Connell) wants an invitation to the party, too.

Coming after Coogler's stint directing two Black Panther films for Marvel, Sinners asks prickly questions about creativity and the price of assimilation. What parts of your culture might you be willing to give up in the name of "fellowship and love"? And what good is harmony if you can't play your own music? The film's grandstanding centrepiece truncates a centuries-long timeline of cultural expression into one literally barn-burning anachronistic musical number. It's the most ambitious moment in a movie loaded with them. Sean McGeady

The Last of Us (2023)

"Based on a video game" flashing up at the start of a TV show doesn’t usually inspire much confidence, but The Last of Us is a definite exception to that rule. Adapted from an award-winning 2013 game into bleakly beautiful drama, in the world of the show (and the game) humanity has been overrun by a fungal pandemic, turning people into monsters and forcing survivors into hiding.

The last hope? A 14-year-old called Ellie, who possesses a mysterious immunity. Anchored by two breakout Game of Thrones stars (Bella Ramsey as the precocious Ellie, Pedro Pascal as her protector Joel), the series is a potent blend of horror and hope. It’s a credit to the performances that in a world of mushroom zombies, it’s the human relationships that hold your attention. Huw Fullerton

The White Lotus (2021)

A sunny setting. Rich characters. A murder. In one sense, the first run of Mike White’s satirical drama used a well-worn formula, but everything else was tweaked — and done exquisitely enough to earn a raft of awards. For series two, the scene shifted to Sicily and another White Lotus resort for less la dolce vita and more la dolce morte.

Then a third season headed east to an island in Thailand. There are few people as good as White at delivering the TV joy of seeing keen-edged satire slice cleanly through its targets. The beauty on the surface gives us eye candy, and plenty of it, while the ugliness below entertains. David Butcher

Succession (2018)

One of the most acclaimed dramas of the past decade went out on a breathless high in 2023, following the Roy media dynasty whose patriarch Logan (Brian Cox) was in his career’s final phase. The question of which of his awful grown-up children should succeed him produced hours of witty, cruel and well-observed drama, its characters caught in an endless chess game where nobody wins… except us at home, marvelling at the dagger-sharp script and bravura acting. Jack Seale

The Sopranos (1999)

The series that completely changed the face of television drama. It demonstrated once and for all that an unsympathetic central character — in this case a violent, womanising New Jersey mob boss — wouldn’t stop viewers tuning in. It proved that TV, or at least American cable TV, could look as good as film. And it showed that actors can make their names on the small screen: James Gandolfini was hailed as an all-time great when he died in 2013, purely on the strength of this sprawling, nuanced beast of a show. Jack Seale

The Wire (2002)

So audacious in its detail that it has almost become a historical document, The Wire (starring Dominic West as Detective Jimmy McNulty) is, in the best possible sense, far too much to take in during one sitting. Every piece of Baltimore’s sprawling noughties society, from the technologically decrepit police force to the child pawns of the drugs trade, via logistics, local government, the education system and the media, was pulled apart and reassembled within the narrow frame of a 4:3 box aspect ratio. Jack Seale

Game of Thrones (2011)

In its eighth and final season, Game of Thrones performed an incredible feat, overtaking Brexit as the nation’s talking point of choice. The show is based on George RR Martin’s series of fantasy novels, A Song of Ice and Fire, and the action takes place throughout the fictional Seven Kingdoms among dragons, ice-zombies and tongue-twisting names like Dothraki and Targaryen.

But you don’t have to be a fantasy buff to enjoy it; the reason Game of Thrones has such broad appeal is that at its heart, it’s a show about death, sex and the politics of power. It’s epic, ambitious and has no shortage of gut-punching shocks. David Brown

Big Little Lies (2017)

Nicole Kidman, Reese Witherspoon and Shailene Woodley play three mothers in an ultra-wealthy Californian seaside town, where the residents do yoga in leggings that cost more than a first-class flight while judging each other’s parenting.

The series begins with a death at the school fundraiser, the identity of the victim unknown. We learn about it through police interviews with other parents, who have gossipy and contemptuous things to say about the women at the heart of the show. Based on the Australia set book by Liane Moriarty, Big Little Lies seems at first a show about bitter, rich women but ends up being more a celebration of female friendship in the face of horror. Kasia Delgado

Sex and the City (1998)

Thanks to the two movies, Sex and the City was sometimes remembered as a nightmarish, endless hen night, all high heels and sugary pink drinks. But that view would overlook what a bitingly clever show it was, the forerunner to critical darlings like Girls. Funny and aspirational (you wouldn’t be invited to columnist Carrie Bradshaw’s parties), the show’s examination of sex was every bit as gory as its contemporary The Sopranos — and a lot better dressed. Jack Seale

DTF St Louis (2026)

If you don’t know what DTF stands for, this family-oriented magazine is unfortunately unable to fill you in. Let us start instead by saying that here’s an arch new drama by Steven Conrad, who previously created the innovative, woefully overlooked spy caper Patriot. Now he authors a superficially more conventional story about a man named Floyd (David Harbour) who is destined soon to end up dead from what seems to be a heart attack. As law enforcement doubt this, we spool to the recent past, where Floyd’s wife Carol (Linda Cardellini) and best mate Clark (Jason Bateman) are becoming two sides of a twisted love triangle. The darkly witty fun starts when Clark suggests downloading an app for couples who want to "spice it up"... Jack Seale

Interstellar (2014)

After exploring the tortured psyche of Batman in the Dark Knight trilogy and the subconscious mind in Inception, director Christopher Nolan here goes to infinity and beyond with a cosmic epic that adds breathtaking consequence to the idea of a "race against time".

Set in a near future when humanity faces global starvation, Nolan's space odyssey stars Matthew McConaughey as a widowed former pilot-turned-farmer who's struggling to cope with an onerous agrarian existence while bringing up two kids. So, when he's given the opportunity "to save the world" by a bunch of boffins (led by Michael Caine), he jumps at the chance, much to the distress of his daughter (Mackenzie Foy).

For this is no ordinary intergalactic mission. It requires McConaughey and his team to enter a mysterious wormhole to find a planet for the human race to colonise - a journey that could take years for the explorers while decades pass on Earth.

Nolan's ambitious film is no mere disaster flick; it's thoughtful sci-fi like Silent Running (1971) and there are also echoes of Stanley Kubrick's 2001: a Space Odyssey (mind-blowing visuals, Hans Zimmer's subtle but evocative score). But unlike that 1968 masterclass, in which concept sometimes overwhelmed character, Nolan puts the bond between the cosmically estranged McConaughey and Foy at the core of his blockbuster, despite the presence of elaborate-looking spaceships, strange planets rife with elemental danger and an omnipresent (and ominous) black hole. Jeremy Aspinall

The Big Bang Theory (2007)

This stratospherically popular US sitcom, about a gang of nerds and the women they love, probably outstayed its welcome by a series or three - but having drifted for a few years after it became a global hit, it won a lot of affection back with a focused 12th and final run, and its last ever episode was filled with all the right kinds of bittersweet emotion. Jack Seale

Veep (2012)

Seinfeld star Julia Louis-Dreyfus is excellent as Selina Meyer – an out-of-her-depth Vice President ('Veep') negotiating the spineless world of White House politics. The supporting cast of aides and advisers includes man-child Jonah (Timothy Simons) and neurotic, devoted Gary (Tony Hale).

It’s tempting to think of Armando Iannucci’s Veep as little more than The Thick of It: USA, but since it hit our screens in 2012 it has evolved into much more than that. Cynical and irreverent, Veep draws on The Thick of It’s political calamity and sweary wordplay, but has forged a charm of its own. David Brown

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