Max’s first big programming burst of the year showcases premium HBO drama (Industry), auteur animation (Genndy Tartakovsky’s Primal) and lifestyle-fueled reality (the TLC import Suddenly Amish). The mix reads like a programming thesis for the service — prestige viewing, pulse and comfort TV all at once, all hitting in a tight window to spike engagement.
Why Industry’s return matters for Max and HBO viewers
Industry has quietly emerged as one of HBO’s sharpest workplace dramas, a period piece tracking ambition and moral drift on the trading floor of Pierpoint & Co. The series follows Harper (Myha’la Herrold) and a gang of strivers scratching up the ranks in London finance, providing an extremely granular view of how money culture re-creates us. It’s had a dedicated following and strong reviews — its IMDb rating is in the 7.5/10 range — and it reliably surfaces on critic roundups for its clear-eyed treatment of power and class.
What makes Industry sticky isn’t so much the jargon or market shocks; it’s the show’s willingness to take career seriously as identity, then chart the costs in real time. HBO’s finance canon is considerable, and Industry stakes out a lane somewhere between the cutthroat swagger of Wall Street stories and the slow-burn character work of cable prestige dramas. Look for higher stakes, more inter-desk politics and the “did they really just do that” twists that drive Monday-morning group chats.
Platform-wise, this is the part that turns “Max” into HBO. Recent Nielsen Gauge snapshots saw Max in the 1%–2% range of total TV usage in the US, with premium premieres offering a measurable bump. A buzzed-about season opener for an HBO drama is exactly the sort of draw that supports share and session length.
Primal roars back with higher stakes and bold animation
The director Genndy Tartakovsky returns with Primal, a nearly wordless and extremely violent survival saga that teams a Neanderthal (Spear) with a T. rex (Fang).
The show’s visual storytelling — frame-by-frame choreography, painterly color and painstaking sound design — still ranks as some of the most distinctive on television. Tartakovsky is an Emmy-winning creator, and Primal has quickly become a critics’ pick, boasting an 8.6/10 on IMDb and winning fans across the board for taking adult animation beyond sex jokes and snark.
The return of Primal also represents a recommitment to adult animation across the board for Max, a category that over-indexes on completion and rewatch rates. Adult Swim and Cartoon Network libraries over the years have served as proverbial engagement engines for the service, with fresh episodes of a top-tier animated title creating that halo effect around adjacent catalogs. Anticipate spikes in time spent on animation hubs when new chapters drop.
A reality curveball inside Suddenly Amish, a TLC import
Suddenly Amish reverses the standard Rumspringa tale: instead of having Amish teens learn about modern life, non-Amish visitors try to adjust to an Amish lifestyle. It’s another classic TLC formula — social experiment, fish-out-of-water tension and a slow drip of personal disclosures — tailor-made for Max’s reality viewership. (TLC franchises like 90 Day Fiancé and Sister Wives are among the most-streamed unscripted titles on the platform.) This new series, in other words, slots neatly into a high-consumption lane.
Warner Bros. Discovery has often stressed the stickiness of adding HBO originals to Discovery brand reality. This rollout is it: prestige to get subscribers in; unscripted fare to keep them watching, night-to-night.
More new arrivals to load the week across genres
After the headliners, Max’s lineup is a spread designed to expand the funnel. Look for new batches of true-crime staples “People Magazine Investigates” and “Evil Lives Here,” new runs of street-racing favorite “Street Outlaws” and its spinoff “The Great Eight,” and a gearhead fix in Hot Rod Garage. Animation fans feel the nostalgia with Totally Spies, and paranormal voyeurs sink their teeth into Unexplained: Caught on Camera. Home-hunters are not left out, either, with fresh episodes of House Hunters International.
The variety is deliberate. “Anybody who has content that works in peak time on both weekdays and weekends is the one winning,” says Ampere Analysis, which observes that climate-proof genres include franchise-heavy unscripted combined with eventized dramas. Max’s idea to set the pace here — anchored by Industry and Primal, enveloped in the realm of reality and true crime — sticks with that proven approach.
What to watch first from Industry, Primal, and Suddenly Amish
Begin with the episode opener of Industry for the week’s most culture-defining conversation; its cold-open energy and last-scene gut punch are a statement piece. Throw that in with Primal’s debut chaser — twenty-odd minutes of pure, propulsive animation devoid of dialogue — and you’ve cleansed the palate. Then when you’re in more of a light, episodic viewing mood, try watching the first episode of Suddenly Amish to see if its concept can approach the power of TLC’s headline successes.
Collectively, this slate is Max asserting its advantage: high-gloss HBO storytelling, auteur-driven animation and a reality pipeline to keep screens on. Once the platform can splice in these drops with smart recommendations — something its product team has been getting better at — look for engagement to rise across more than just the premieres grabbing headlines.
