HBO Max doubles down on high-stakes viewing this week with an A24 combat thriller, a searing true-crime investigation and a science-forward tour of catastrophic failures.
It’s a mix of shows calculated to keep you glued — first white-knuckle fiction, then real-world mysteries and the mechanics of disaster.
Spotlight: A24’s Warfare
As the marquee says, weve got Warfare — a taut 95-minute pressure cooker from Alex Garland and Iraq War vet Ray Mendoza. Taking place in the immediate aftermath of the Battle of Ramadi and told (more or less) in real time, it plunges viewers into the cramped decisions and mortal calculus that pursued a team of Navy SEALs. The cast — D’Pharoah Woon-A-Tai, Will Poulter and Cosmo Jarvis — plays it with brittle restraint; the filmmaking leans into real-world tactics, spare scoring and bruising sound design.
Garland’s most recent release, Civil War, was one of A24’s highest grossing box office performers, having smashed through the $100M mark worldwide per Box Office Mojo. That momentum is what matters here: It signals a robust appetite for politically freighted, technically immaculate war stories. With Mendoza’s lived experience driving the action, Warfare is in search of authenticity more than spectacle — think tightly choreographed patrols, comms discipline and the moral vertigo that comes with every trigger pull. Look for this to be the one that’s on everyone’s lips among both action purists and awards-season handicappers.
True-crime urgency: Who Killed Our Daughter
Nonfiction-wise, Who Killed Our Daughter returns to the case of Debanhi Escobar — an 18-year-old law student whose disappearance and subsequent discovery near Monterrey set off a new round of soul searching over feminicides in Mexico. The series not only tracks the last hours, it questions the investigative holes and public pressures that sometimes slow justice. Its National Registry of Missing Persons has registered more than 100,000 people missing in recent years, and the United Nations organization UN Women has consistently recorded femicide as a state of prolonged emergency. In that scope, the show’s case study broadens into a wider indictment of institutions and a cry for accountability.
Told as much for the type of viewer who is drawn to meticulous, evidence-based storytelling, it’s pushed toward a less sensationalist version of true crime — a systemic audit of timelines and surveillance breadcrumbs and narrative discontinuities that families and journalists alike have struggled to fit together in the shadow of the tragedy.
Science of disaster: Destruction Decoded
Wrapping up the theme is Destruction Decoded, a Discovery Channel import hosted by Dan Nachtrab that deconstructs how and why things fall apart. Each episode reassembles a different sort of disaster — train crashes, building collapses, doomed expeditions — with archive footage, computer simulation and talking heads to show us the chain reactions lurking within headlines. If you listen to post-incident reports from organizations such as the National Transportation Safety Board, or if you pay attention to the American Society of Civil Engineers’ grades for infrastructure, you’ll appreciate this feature of 7A’s as well: Its focus on failure modes and load limits and human factors that turn near-misses into catastrophes.
This edutainment with bite — satisfyingly technical but never losing sight of the human cost — is exactly the sort of series that turns casual viewers into its own armchair detectives.
Also new from partner hubs
HBO Max’s larger pipeline also draws from its lifestyle and reality bench for lighter, watchable counterprogramming. Home and food favorites whip up fresh cycles — think vacation-property rescues, off-road builds and seasonal baking throwdowns — along with long-running stalwarts including Chopped. True-crime completists have more case studies coming in new episodes of Signs of a Psychopath and gearheads can get Truck U back for another season of hands-on fixes and banter.
There’s regional grit in Built in the Bronx and a new family-business angle in Truck Dynasty. For rehab voyeurs, Sin City Rehab counterbalances high-risk flips with a Las Vegas spicing of flair. And, yes, parents catch a breather: Bea’s Block will be a preschool-friendly oasis in the midst of the week’s heavier fare — evidence that this service still programs for every hour of the household day.
Why this slate lands now
Programming strategy matters. A prestige war film touching Oscar-sweet spots serves as the initial surge; true-crime and disaster explainers keep viewers hooked on multi-episode arcs. At the same time, analytics firms that track TV interest, such as Parrot Analytics, have regularly found high audience demand for crime and thrillers, while Nielsen’s The Gauge reports streaming accounts for more than half of all TV viewing over all — clearly fertile ground for exactly these types of shows. By stacking a cinematic tentpole alongside deeply reported non-fiction and comfort-viewing franchises, HBO Max is not just chasing clicks; it’s building session length and retention across very different moods.
If you want the short version: Start with Warfare for the adrenaline and craftsmanship, cool down with Destruction Decoded’s meticulous breakdowns, and — if you can stomach the gravity — look to Who Killed Our Daughter for that necessary, unflinching view of a case that galvanized a country. The remainder of the arrivals fill in the margins — once again demonstrating this platform’s virtue in breadth and an apparent strong editorial spine.
