Morgan Henderson (Dominic West) is being feted at a flashy tech industry event. His social media platform, Zephyr, has zipped to worldwide popularity on a framework of promoting positivity, and with its meteoric rise, Henderson has become fabulously, impossibly, stupidly rich. He listens with a bland smile to the event’s emcee blow smoke up his ass, and we take in the room. It features lazerbeam lighting and a dais fabricated from clear acetate — as see-thru transparent as all the fancily-dressed people clapping for Henderson’s speech. The award he receives is also transparent, a hunk of crystal, essentially meaningless, as he presents himself as the paragon of a new era of communication. “It is to me one of the great missed opportunities of our age,” Henderson tells his admirers and competitors, “that social media serves to force us apart.” 

Then Henderson departs the event, finds the attractive young woman he fixated on from the stage, and proceeds to spend the night with her, further cleaving apart his already broken marriage to A-list movie star Carla Duval (Sienna Miller). Given the themes of his speech, and the supposed altruism of his tech world footprint, it will become significant in HBO‘s War that this woman, Flora Monroe (Rose Williams), provides proof of Henderson’s philandering by staging a naked selfie as he sleeps. She then steps outside to the hotel suite’s balcony, which overlooks the heart of London. Flora makes a phone call, and sends the pic. “Carla? It’s done.” 

Ya burnt, Henderson! Maybe. A post-coitus photo of a powerful man with a woman thirty years his junior who is not his wife might not be an indisputable fact, because Episode 1 of War soon expands to include representatives of Cathcarts, London’s top law firm, who Henderson has on retainer for situations exactly like this. Beatrice “Queen Bea” Ubosi (Nina Sosanya) and St. John Smallwood (Pip Torrens), both Cathcarts partners, are quick to a plan which treats their wealthy client’s rabid infidelity as a nothingburger. “You are the wronged party here,” they tell Henderson. “What we do is get ahead of this.” 

What could also be seen as getting ahead of this is Carla Duval’s arrangement with Flora, who she calls a work friend, to seduce her serial cheater husband. In Paris, as she does press for her new period war film Milliner, Carla meets with two lawyers of her own, Nicholas Taylor (James McArdle) and Serena Byrne (Phoebe Fox). The married counselors’ firm, Taylor & Byrne, is certainly high profile. But it is also in the shadow of Cathcarts, and Serena believes taking on Carla’s divorce will push their firm to the top position. They have an existing relationship with Carla — before they established Taylor & Byrne, Nicholas was the attorney on Carla and Morgan’s pre-nuptial agreement — and Serena stresses it’s not a problem for the case to be built around a photo that reeks of entrapment, given what’s at stake. Meaning: a huge payday for them.

In London, as War contrasts the stodgy, traditional, dark leather environs of Cathcarts with the light-filled, stark granite spaces of Taylor & Byrne — a relief of Lady Justice carved into a wall is a nice touch — the firms conduct competing strategy sessions. Their respective war rooms are now open for business, and pesky matters of laws as they are written are not a concern. “How she obtained the photo is regrettable,” says Budgie (Celia Imrie), Taylor & Byrne’s lead barrister. “But it exists,” she adds, and with the kind of ravenous smile that illustrates how eager she is to enter this battle.

Welcome to War, a stylish legal thriller from George Kay, creator-writer of things you have loved including Killing Eve, Lupin, and Hijack. There is money flowing everywhere in this thing — its look and feel on screen, but also the hiring of a top-shelf cast — and lots of suggestion, early on in the writing, as to the power of power. who has it when, how it can be wielded, and how much it takes to simultaneously attack and parry. In Episode 1, as Morgan Henderson and Carla Duval, Dominic West and Sienna Miller share only a word or two of actual dialogue. But as they make their sham public appearance as a couple at the London premiere of Milliner, West and Miller silently impart how stink crept into this union. We can tell they know each other well, even if what they might have once had has run fallow. Now that their discord has well-paid representation on both sides, we anticipate learning much more about what drives them, and what that will mean for the future. Did we mention Carla and Morgan have a son? As classy as War looks, it’s certain to become very, very — very! — messy.      

Discovery for War Season 1 Episode 1 (“It’s Done”): 

• What’s Johnny Warren (Archie Renaux) up to? Presented as a scrappy, University of Michigan-trained lawyer who works as a waiter while he searches for his big break, what we learn of Johnny’s internal wiring is confused by a late-breaking twist. “It’s done,” he texts Cathcarts, echoing Flora’s message to Carla. Johnny has been hired as a junior associate on the Duval-Henderson divorce at Taylor & Byrne. But he’s apparently a mole for the other side.

• For as forgone a conclusion as Carla’s filing for divorce is, we also sense there are gaps in what she told Serena and Nicholas. That she didn’t pay Flora for her seduction services. That she is entirely the victim in this. Underneath the surface of War, it seems like everybody is playing everybody else, making who is the victim of anything even harder to prove.

• And War is also playing some jams while all this is happening. Episode 1 of the series includes choice selections from LCD Soundsystem (“Oh Baby”), T. Rex (“Ride a White Swan”), Black Strobe (“I’m a Man”), and Nancy Sinatra (“The End”).     

Johnny Loftus (@johnnyloftus.bsky.social) is a Chicago-based writer. A veteran of the alternative weekly trenches, his work has also appeared in Entertainment Weekly, Pitchfork, The All Music Guide, and The Village Voice.