Cathcarts works in dark rooms that seem to have inherited their authority along with the furniture. Across London, Taylor & Byrne conducts business behind glass, its bright offices advertising a cleaner way to practice law. The contrast is so legible it could belong in a pitch deck. Serena Byrne left Cathcarts to build something better with her husband, Nicholas Taylor, and the two firms now face each other across a divorce case. The interesting question is how long Taylor & Byrne can keep the promise its office makes.
An answer begins to form around a photograph. Actress Carla Duval has arranged for Flora to test rumors that her husband, tech billionaire Morgan Henderson, is unfaithful. Flora sends a selfie with him asleep, and Carla passes it to her lawyers. It is useful evidence for Carla and evidence of her own scheme. War gives its supposedly principled firm a choice with consequences instead of simply dressing one team in glass and the other in wood. The case has barely begun, and the distance between professional values and professional advantage is already shrinking.
George Kay’s eight-episode HBO and Sky drama uses the divorce to bring two rival London firms into conflict, but its richest subject is the industry around a wealthy couple’s unhappiness. Carla, played by Sienna Miller, and Morgan, played by Dominic West, supply the celebrity appeal. Their lawyers turn estrangement into documents, leverage, and a contest that might make careers. Former colleagues now sit on opposite sides, which gives every exchange a charge beyond the clients’ interests. Family law allows the series to put intimacy through the machinery of a thriller: a private betrayal can become a public tactic in a matter of scenes.
The performances keep that machinery entertaining even when its workings are ugly. Pip Torrens plays Cathcarts’ St. John Smallwood with such dry control that a cutting remark can sound almost administrative. Phoebe Fox gives Serena a harder task. Her resolve to practice differently has to survive the immediate demands of keeping a young firm competitive, while she and Nicholas prepare for a child. Fox and James McArdle make the couple’s practiced cooperation convincing; they also let resentment show through the workday. The question of how their family will accommodate two demanding careers belongs to this case, where the legal profession has abundant language for protecting a client’s interests and rather less time for the people doing the protecting.
Johnny Warren exposes another cost of entering that world. Archie Renaux’s aspiring lawyer interviews at elite firms during breaks from waiting tables, changing into the clothes required for one life before returning to the other. His eagerness to secure a place can look ruthless, but the series has shown what access requires before it asks us to judge his choices. His girlfriend’s embarrassment about his job adds a social pressure the partners at Cathcarts have never had to dress for. Johnny’s story gives the firms’ rivalry a view from below, even as the drama enjoys the speed with which ambition can become a dangerous asset.
Kay is skilled at changing the balance of power. A disclosure gives one team an advantage, a lawyer finds a way to use it, and the opposing firm looks for the weakness in that move. The dialogue is sharp enough to make the preparation as enjoyable as the courtroom confrontation. Miller and West, meanwhile, prevent Carla and Morgan from becoming mere instructions delivered to counsel. Their flashes of regret suggest two people who retain some feeling for each other while authorizing increasingly hostile acts. That complication matters: the case grows nastier partly because the professionals can give each hurt a procedure and a price.
The series is less searching about the fortune that makes this conflict so lucrative. Morgan offers an adviser a watch worth a million dollars if he undresses on command, then stops him once the point is made. West lets Morgan’s disgust register, but the scene also shows how easily he can turn another person’s dignity into an experiment. War knows the gesture is cruel. It spends less time examining the world that permits him to make it. Morgan’s supposedly positive social media platform is another suggestive detail whose implications remain largely outside the frame. Carla’s declining film career gives Miller room for wit about the treatment of an aging actress, though that pressure, too, often yields to the next legal move.
The crowded cast helps explain both the show’s energy and its limits. The lawyers’ competing styles make a long case lively, while some late personal details arrive without enough groundwork to change our understanding of the people involved. David Schill’s premature baby, disclosed well into the season, is one such detour. The eight episodes give the central divorce room to escalate and reach a resolution without a major cliffhanger, though the pace can slacken when a subplot has less to do than the case itself.
War’s planned anthology format offers a sensible future for its rival firms: another case can put their principles under a different kind of pressure. For now, Kay has made a highly watchable drama about lawyers who know how to make conflict last. Serena’s glass office remains its most telling piece of décor. Each time her firm gains an advantage, the question of what it can still see clearly becomes a little harder to answer.
War is a sleek UK/US legal drama set in London’s cutthroat legal sector, created by George Kay and directed by Ben Taylor. The series revolves around the high-stakes, ruthless divorce proceedings between a wealthy tech titan and his film-star wife, dragging rival premier law firms into a web of ambition and scandal. The eight-part series premieres on October 1, 2026, and is available to watch on HBO and stream on HBO Max in the US, as well as Sky Atlantic and NOW in the UK.
Where to Watch War Online
Full Credits
Title: War
Distributor: HBO, Sky Atlantic
Release date: October 1, 2026
Rating: TV-MA
Running time: 60 minutes per episode
Director: Ben Taylor
Writers: George Kay, Kelly Jones, Jess Brittain, Catherine Shepherd, Yemi Oyefuwa, Krissie Ducker
Producers and Executive Producers: Laurie Borg, George Kay, Ben Taylor, Willow Grylls, Matt Sandford, Susan Breen, Andrea Dewsbery, Megan Spanjian
Cast: Dominic West, Sienna Miller, Archie Renaux, Phoebe Fox, James McArdle, Nina Sosanya, Pip Torrens, Celia Imrie, Nick Mohammed, Emma Laird, Adrian Scarborough, Archie Panjabi
Director of Photography (Cinematographer): Ed Rutherford
Editors: Mark Trend, Gary Dollner
Composer: David Arnold
The Review
War
War turns a celebrity divorce into an absorbing contest between lawyers whose principles grow less certain with every advantage gained. Its rival firms, sharp performances, and shifting tactics sustain the eight episodes. The series is less curious about the immense wealth that makes the fight possible, and a few subplots struggle to earn their place. Still, its legal world has enough tension to make another case an appealing prospect.
PROS
- Sharp rivalry between the law firms
- Strong performances across the central cast
- - An effective eight-episode case
CONS
- Limited scrutiny of extreme wealth
- Some underdeveloped subplots
- - Social media and career pressures receive little attention
