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It’s more than 50 years since Home Box Office (HBO) was launched in the US, and more than 30 since shows like Oz, Dream On and The Larry Sanders Show made good on its tagline: ‘It’s not TV. It’s HBO.’ But although the brand has been associated with some of the greatest shows from the ‘golden age of television’, including The Sopranos, The Wire, Game of Thrones, Deadwood, Curb Your Enthusiasm and, more recently, Succession, HBO has never been available in the UK – until now.
While HBO’s best-known shows have been accessible to UK audiences via its deal with Sky and terrestrial channels, HBO will finally be available in the UK and Ireland from March 26. But now that it’s almost here, is it actually worth it?
How much does HBO Max cost?
Entry level ‘basic with ads’ costs £4.99/month, allowing streaming on two devices in full HD. Pay an extra £1 for ‘standard with ads’ and you can download up to 30 episodes and films to watch offline. Of course, HBO pioneered broadcasting shows without ads, so for the best experience you’d want the ad-free standard package (£9.99/month). Or you can really take HBO to the max with the premium package (£14.99/month), which offers 4K Ultra HD and Dolby Atmos (where available), plus a storage-straining 100 downloads.
What are the best things to watch on HBO Max?
Probably the best show available from launch is The Pitt, the Emmy-winning medical drama starring Noah Wyle, which drops all of season one on day one, followed by a weekly rollout of season two. It will also be the only place to catch up on the first three seasons of Euphoria in anticipation of the fourth series in April.
With HBO’s long-standing contract with Sky Atlantic having ended, HBO Max will also be the only place to watch DC’s new Green Lantern series The Lantern and the highly anticipated new Harry Potter series – as well as other new shows, including brand new comedies DTF St. Louis, which stars Jason Bateman, David Harbour and Linda Cardellini, and Rooster, starring Steve Carell. HBO classics like Succession, The White Lotus, Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, The Wire, Veep and The Last of Us will also be available from launch. Oh, and if you’ve been missing Friends since it left Netflix, it’s coming back – along with the first two seasons of Lisa Kudrow’s post-Friends comedy The Comeback, which – after a decade away – debuts its third and final series later this year.
Will I lose access to HBO shows if I’m a Sky or NOW TV subscriber?
Nope! Anyone with a £9.99 per month Entertainment subscription will enjoy HBO Max content from launch, while those with the Sky Ultimate TV package on Sky Stream, Sky Glass and Sky Q will get HBO Max at no extra cost. New subscribers who don’t mind giving the Murdochs more money might also consider the new Ultimate TV package, which bundles HBO Max with Sky TV, Netflix and Disney+ for £24 per month – a significant saving over your individual subscriptions.
Will future HBO shows launch straight onto HBO Max in the UK?
Yes, and HBO Max will also be home to hundreds of HBO original films, as well as many from Warner Bros., including Dune: Part One, One Battle After Another, Sinners and Superman. Going forward, the new service will also be home to first-run Warner Bros. movies following their theatrical run, including Dune: Part Three, Supergirl, Mortal Kombat II – and, next year, Godzilla x Kong: Supernova, The Batman: Part II, the untitled A Minecraft Movie sequel and Gremlins 3! If sequels, prequels and remakes aren’t your bag, there’ll also be sci-fi drama Flowervale Street, live-action animation comedy Animal Friends and comic book-based body horror Clayface, set to be the third chapter in the new DC Universe, after Superman and Supergirl.
Is it good value compared with Netflix and Disney+?
Yes – especially if you’ve watched all the good stuff on your other subscriptions and are ready to make a change. HBO Max is cheaper than Netflix (currently £5.99/month with ads, £12.99 without, and £18.99 for premium) and competitive with Disney+ (£5.99 with ads, £9.99 without, £14.99 for premium), although the ‘mouse house’ offers a discount for an annual subscription, which gives it the slight edge. NOW TV is currently offering new subscribers a 50 percent discount (from £5.99 to £2.99 per month) if you subscribe for a whole year, and £9.99 per month thereafter, but there’s a catch – if you want HD (isn’t that standard these days?), add £6 per month.
Does HBO Max provide access to all HBO content?
Sadly not. Some of the best of the shows that put HBO on the map – like Dream On and the peerless The Larry Sanders Show – won’t be added to the service, possibly because they haven’t been upgraded for HD yet. Nor will they be bringing back some of their hardest-to-find HBO Films, such as James Woods as Roy Cohn in Citizen Cohn, Ving Rhames as Don King in Only in America, William Friedkin’s star-studded remake of 12 Angry Men or that one where Robert Duvall played Joseph Stalin looking like a cross between Gerard Depardieu and Steven Seagal. Shame!
HBO Max launches in the UK and Ireland on March 26.