HBO Teams with Sky to Create Law Series 'War' Starring Sienna Miller

After a decade of multiple new owners, an ill-advised merger, and now an eventual unmerger (if a different, larger, also ill-advised merger doesn't happen first), HBO is getting back to doing what it has always done best. When it was a premium cable channel, HBO defined itself by reworking tried-and-true TV show tropes with a more refined eye. Series like Fraggle Rock, Deadwood, The Wire, and The Sopranos were merely loftier versions of children's television, westerns, police procedurals, and family dramas. HBO is returning to that model with The Pitt, a medical drama run through HBO's sensibilities, its biggest hit in years.

What HBO is missing from this lineup is a courtroom procedural in the style of Suits. No surprise then that the network announced today it would team up with British co-producer Sky (with whom it made Chernobyl) for a new courtroom-based drama series, War. A series set in London's cutthroat world of white-shoe firms, the new show has a touch of the late-blooming hit Industry to it, but with a twist: War is planned as an anthology series, with the first two seasons officially greenlit.

HBO's swing here is a big one. As we've noted before, Americans don't seem particularly engaged by contemporary British courtroom dramas; Law & Order: U.K. flopped, as did Silks. (Something about the artifice of the dress code and the wigs seems to act as a barrier.) Perhaps that's why HBO opted for an anthology series, allowing it to turn over the cast at will. It also means they can land high-end actors to headline, such as film star Sienna Miller, whose successful turn in Netflix's Anatomy of a Scandal heralded her move to the small screen. She'll co-star with Dominic West, who returns to HBO nearly 30 years after he last starred in The Wire.