‘War’ Review: Dominic West and Sienna Miller Lead HBO’s Divorce Drama

A few episodes of HBO’s juicy legal drama WarI was struck by a thought as unexpected as it was unserious: could I do you want to divorce?

Mind you, I am perfectly happy in my marriage, with no reason to leave it; I knew even as I said these words that it was a joke. But the fact that they came to mind is a testament to the talent of creator George Kay. It turns out that, in skillful enough hands, even the morally filthy, emotionally agonizing, financially ruinous process of dividing a household’s assets can feel an awful lot like fun.

Even though the only battles here are those fought in the courtroom, the characters seem to have taken to heart that old view that all is fair in love and (metaphorical) war.

In the opening minutes of the premiere, tech mogul Morgan (Dominic West), a hundred millionaire or billionaire depending on who asks and why, has a one-night stand with a beautiful stranger (Rose William’s Flora). What he doesn’t realize is that their meeting was not a chance meeting but a honey trap orchestrated by his movie star wife, Carla (Sienna Miller), to prove his infidelity once and for all. The bedroom selfie Flora secretly sends her the next morning is the final straw that pushes Carla to file for divorce.

It’s such dirty stuff that Carla’s lawyers, Nick (James McArdle) and Serena (Phoebe Fox), of their eponymous new firm Taylor & Byrne, are appalled to hear about it – although for reasons of bad optics rather than bad ethics. Morgan’s lawyers, St. John (Pip Torrens) and Beatrice (Nina Sosanya), of the famous Cathcarts institution, are delighted to learn this for the same reasons.

This will also prove to be just one of many tricks deployed by both sides between now and the end of the season and, to the joy of the lawyers and ours, far from the dirtiest.

Surely there is a version of this saga that would mourn the inhumanity of it all, and War finds flashes of Marriage story— like the poignancy of Carla and Morgan’s occasional, halting, and generally ineffective efforts to keep their teams from going for the jugular — but not, in my opinion, enough to cloud my own eyes.

There is probably another version that could use the split to comment on the way money distorts relationships, or the gender double standards applied to husbands and wives, or our sinister fascination with nasty celebrity divorces. And there’s a bit of all that in War as well – including a scene evoking a particularly awful moment from the Olivia Wilde-Jason Sudeikis breakup. But none of these themes are explored with enough depth or nuance to unearth something we’ve never seen before.

(Meanwhile, I don’t think there is a version of War this might actually explain how Morgan decided to invent a social media site without the toxicity of X or Meta. Instead, consider this detail a sign that we’ve simply entered a nicer parallel timeline.)

by Kay War is primarily concerned with entertaining us through juicy twists and turns – and thathe comes out of it with panache.

As demonstrated in Divert And LupineKay has a special talent for elevating a standard thriller into dizzying, addictive television with her above-average mastery of the basics of storytelling. Each of the season’s eight hours is elegantly constructed and precisely paced. Each of the settings, from Taylor & Byrne’s airy blue steel offices to Cathcarts’ dark mahogany wood rooms, is considered down to the last chipped wooden table and captured by director Ben Taylor with just enough style to keep things interesting. Each of the characters, down to the ensemble of paralegals and assistants, is given enough shading to suggest entire lives that extend far beyond the glimpses we see on screen.

The strongest actors are undoubtedly Miller and West, ideally cast to exude effortless glamor and ruffled arrogance respectively. But the meatiest parts belong to their characters’ lawyers. As a happy couple, Fox and McArdle share a sweet, easy chemistry that contrasts sharply with the coldness between Morgan and Carla. Across the conference table, Sosanya plays Beatrice like steel swaddled in cashmere, while Miles Jupp, as her colleague David, sheds his genteel snobbery to reveal a surprisingly silly belly.

Archie Renaux is almost too effective in his unctuosity as Johnny, an ambitious young lawyer – I found he occasionally morphed from overshadowing the serial killer, although I hated him as that became its own kind of fun. But perhaps no one in the entire ensemble is having more fun than Torrens. His St. John is a pretty horrible person, not above indulging in schoolyard bullying tactics to get what he wants. But he gets all the bitchiest lines, and delivers them in such commanding tones that it’s hard not to identify with Morgan when he quips, “I love the way you talk to me with such disdain. So refreshing.”

With such enthusiastic fighters on both sides, the question is never whether things will get ugly – only how ugly they will get. It speaks volumes about the deft balance Kay strikes in making these people watchable but not too likable, so that we can root with their lawyers to move through mediation and arbitration and straight into a very public court battle – even if their cheap shots and surprise aces usually involve setting aside frivolities like “truth” or “love” or “Carla’s heartbroken 16-year-old son Gabe” (played by Youth(It’s Aran Murphy).

Indeed, if War leaves behind a slight tinge of disappointment, it is due to a slight stumble of courage. In the final hour, the series finally succumbs to the sentimentality it has mostly escaped, grasping and not quite capturing a deeper insight into human connection.

But only for a moment. Within minutes, we’re back to seeing Nick wryly reassuring Serena: “We’re lawyers. We say things we don’t mean all the time” – and doing thatSomehow, one of the sweetest lines anyone has ever said to anyone else in the entire series.

Who knows what secrets a marriage can really hold? More to the point, who cares? War understands better than anyone that sometimes what matters about a tale is not how factually true or morally right it is, but how convincingly it draws you into the journey.