HBO Max Now Live In The UK – But Is It Worth It?

After years of waiting – and months of complicated announcements, Sky deals, and a Hollywood bidding war that frankly deserves its own documentary – HBO Max is now live in the UK.

As of today, March 26, you can subscribe to HBO Max directly in the UK for the first time. The service brings together HBO’s back catalogue, Warner Bros. films, TNT Sports, and a growing slate of originals – all in one app, all without needing a Sky subscription.

I’ve had a few hours with the service this morning, and there are some interesting early observations – including a few quirks worth knowing about before you sign up. More on that below.

For UK viewers, this has been a long time coming. HBO programming has been available here for decades, but always through Sky – Sky Atlantic has been the home of Game of Thrones, The Sopranos, The Wire, and pretty much every prestige HBO drama you can think of.

The idea of subscribing directly to an HBO service, like millions of Americans have been able to do for years, simply wasn’t an option here.

That changes today.

What’s On It

The flagship launch title is The Pitt, the Emmy and Golden Globe-winning medical drama starring Noah Wyle. Season one is available in full right now, and season two episodes are rolling out weekly – exclusively on HBO Max in the UK.

If you’ve been hearing about this show and wondering where to watch it, this is where.

Alongside The Pitt, much (but not all) of the HBO back catalogue arrives today. Game of Thrones, Succession, Euphoria (seasons one and two), Girls, Veep, Boardwalk Empire, Big Little Lies – it’s a serious archive. A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms, the Game of Thrones prequel series, is also available in full.

On the comedy side, The Big Bang Theory and Friends are both included – the latter leaving Netflix for HBO Max, which will come as welcome news to the surprisingly large portion of the population that rewatches it on rotation.

For new originals launching alongside the service – Rooster is a new HBO comedy starring Steve Carell, set on a college campus. DTF St. Louis is a limited series with Jason Bateman and David Harbour.

And The Comeback returns for a third season, with Lisa Kudrow reprising her Emmy-nominated role as Valerie Cherish – 20 years after the show originally aired, with Andrew Scott among the new cast.

There’s also some interesting international content, including the French drama The Seduction (a reimagining of Les Liaisons Dangereuses), the Spanish-language Like Water for Chocolate (executive produced by Salma Hayek Pinault), and the Italian series Portobello – a dramatisation of the real-life story of beloved TV host Enzo Tortora, who was falsely accused of Camorra links in the 1980s.

Documentary fans get the Oscar-nominated Armed Only With a Camera: The Life and Death of Brent Renaud, the Mel Brooks two-parter The 99 Year Old Man!, and Boom Box: Beats and Betrayal – a new British true crime series about a London recording studio that became entangled in the illegal arms trade.

Coming up: Euphoria season three arrives in April, followed by House of the Dragon season three later in the year. Later in 2026, Lanterns – the DC Green Lantern series – is also due.

And of course, there’s a slate of Warner Bros. films – though which ones you can watch depends on your subscription tier. 

But Hasn’t Most Of This Already Been On Sky?

If a lot of that content sounds familiar, there’s a good reason for it – most of it has been on Sky for years, and that relationship isn’t ending today.

HBO series that began their UK run on Sky Atlantic – including Euphoria, The Last of Us, House of the Dragon, and The White Lotus – will continue to air on Sky simultaneously with HBO Max.

So for Sky subscribers (and soon also some Virgin Media TV subscribers), the day-to-day viewing experience for those shows doesn’t change at all.

Add to that the fact that most Sky subscribers are getting HBO Max Basic with Ads bundled into their existing subscription at no extra cost today, and you have a situation where a huge number of UK viewers will encounter HBO Max without ever subscribing to it directly.

All of which means HBO Max faces a real challenge in building its own identity here. When so many subscribers are getting it for free through Sky (and NOW), and the shows that made HBO famous are still airing on Sky Atlantic, it will take time – and probably a string of exclusives – before most UK viewers think of HBO Max as its own thing rather than an extension of what they already had.

The Pitt is perhaps the clearest early example of what that could look like – it’s one of the few high-profile HBO shows at launch that hasn’t already aired on Sky.

Where Can You Watch It

HBO Max is available on most of the streaming devices and Smart TVs you’re likely to already own – Amazon Fire TV sticks and Fire TVs, Roku devices, Android TV and Google TV devices, Samsung and LG Smart TVs, PlayStation, Xbox, iPhones, Android phones and tablets – and more.

The HBO Max app is also available now on Netgem’s Pleio Freely box, but Manhattan’s Aero Freely box will only get it in a few weeks (though it IS available on TVs with TiVo OS).

How To Get It

Direct subscription. You can sign up at hbomax.com right now. There are four entertainment tiers:

• Basic with Ads – £4.99/month: Two devices, Full HD. HBO shows and Warner Bros. back catalogue films, but not the newest theatrical releases. No offline downloads.
• Standard with Ads – £5.99/month: Two devices, Full HD, up to 30 downloads per month. Adds the newest theatrical releases.
• Standard – £9.99/month: Same as above, but ad-free.
• Premium – £14.99/month: Four devices, 4K Ultra HD, Dolby Atmos, 100 downloads, ad-free.

TNT Sports can be added to any tier except Basic with Ads for £30.99 per month, or you can commit to a 12-month Saver Plan to bring that cost down.

You can also subscribe to HBO Max on Amazon, as a Prime Video Channel.

Sky customers. If you’re on Sky Stream, Sky Glass, or Sky Q with Sky Ultimate TV, HBO Max Basic with Ads is included in your subscription from today at no extra cost – and you get a proper standalone HBO Max account, meaning you can use the HBO Max app directly on any compatible device.

Sky customers can also upgrade to higher tiers through Sky Billing, paying only the difference above the Basic with Ads price.

NOW Entertainment subscribers. From today, your membership is automatically upgraded to NOW Entertainment & HBO Max at no extra cost.

HBO Max content appears directly in the NOW app alongside Sky’s existing channels and on-demand content. There’s also an option to activate a standalone HBO Max account by contacting NOW via live chat. One reader has already reported that a NOW support agent wasn’t aware of the feature when they asked about it today, yet another successfully activated via NOW’s chatbot – so expect some confusion today.

Prime Video Channels. HBO Max is available as an add-on through Prime Video, with the option to also activate a standalone account to use the HBO Max app directly.

EE TV customers. If you have a NOW Entertainment membership as part of your EE TV bundle, you get HBO Max on the same terms as NOW subscribers – content in the NOW app, with the standalone activation option available via live chat.

Virgin Media customers. HBO Max is available as a standalone app and direct subscription, but it’s not part of any Virgin Media bundle. The service is also not eligible for Virgin’s 10% monthly credit discount on Flex – so Virgin customers are essentially in the same position as anyone signing up directly, without any preferential deal from their provider.

• Still confused? Here’s my in-depth HBO Max guide.

HBO Max First Impressions

The app itself is available on Fire TV and Roku, but voice search for HBO Max hadn’t kicked in on either platform at the time of writing – meaning you’ll need to search for it manually for now. That’ll almost certainly be sorted as the day goes on.

One quirk on Android: you can’t sign up directly through the Android app – you have to create your account via the website first, then log in on the app. That’s not the case on Fire TV and Roku, where you can sign up directly within the app itself.

It’s also interesting to see that HBO Max really doesn’t want you to pick the cheapest tier. On the main website, the Basic with Ads plan at £4.99/month isn’t presented alongside the other options – it’s tucked away under a “More Plans” button.

Back at the launch event last month, I noted that the Basic tier almost felt like it existed primarily to differentiate between what Sky subscribers get for free and what direct subscribers pay for – and the way it’s been somewhat buried on the website rather reinforces that impression.

If you do end up on Basic with Ads – which excludes the most recent theatrical releases – there’s another thing to watch out for.

In the HBO Max TV app, there’s no indication on film thumbnails whether a title is included in your plan or not. You only find out when you tap through to the film’s page and see a “Get Access” button instead of a play button.

The website handles this better – locked titles already show “Get Access” on the thumbnail itself – but in the app it’s a mild frustration.

One important note on content: the UK library is not the same as the US one. That’s fairly standard for streaming services, but worth flagging – some titles available on HBO Max in the US won’t be here, either because the UK rights are held elsewhere (Sky has quite a few, for instance) or simply because they haven’t been licensed for this market. 

So for example – “The Larry Sanders Show” – and HBO show – is available in the US – but not in the UK. “Heated Rivalry” – a Canadian Crave production was shown on HBO Max in the US, but in the UK, Sky bought the rights to it.

And the honest overall verdict for now – if you’ve been a Sky or NOW subscriber for years and you’re already an HBO fan, casually browsing HBO Max today probably won’t feel like a revelation.

You’ll recognise most of what’s there. The archive library does go slightly deeper than what Sky offered, and The Pitt is genuinely unmissable if you haven’t seen it.

But for returning Sky customers, the sense of something truly new will build over time rather than hitting you immediately.

If you’re new to HBO content entirely though – never had Sky or NOW – this is a remarkable place to start.

HBO Max On NOW

As promised, HBO Max is fully baked into the NOW app – there’s no separate app to install if you’re a NOW subscriber, the content simply appears alongside everything else.

One thing that might catch your eye: most HBO Max shows within NOW carry a small HBO Max logo on their thumbnail and show page.

But shows that are still simulcasting on Sky Atlantic – The Last of Us, for example – don’t carry that logo, because they’re technically still part of Sky’s deal rather than being delivered through HBO Max directly.

It doesn’t change what you can watch, but it does muddle the Sky/HBO Max distinction even further for anyone trying to work out who owns what.

The Warner Bros. films that are now included in NOW Entertainment (without needing a NOW Cinema membership) are there – but they’re not easy to find.

There’s currently no dedicated HBO Max or Warner Bros. section in the Movies area, so titles you can watch are mixed in with titles you can’t (without a Cinema subscription).

The only way to tell the difference is to look for the HBO Max logo on a thumbnail rather than a lock icon. Hopefully a dedicated category gets added before long.

The Paramount Elephant In The Room

It would feel odd not to mention the bigger picture here, because the service you’re signing up for today might look quite different in a year or two.

After a months-long Hollywood bidding war, Paramount Skydance emerged as the buyer of Warner Bros. Discovery. The deal, valued at around $111 billion, was formally signed in late February.

The merger still needs regulatory approval and a shareholder vote, but if it goes through – which currently looks likely – Paramount CEO David Ellison has confirmed that HBO Max and Paramount+ will be merged into a single streaming service.

Ellison has said the HBO brand will be preserved and operate with independence within whatever the combined platform ends up being called, but no name, pricing, or timeline has been announced.

What that means in practice for UK subscribers is genuinely unknown. Paramount+ is already available here, and the Sky deal around HBO Max is fresh. How all of that fits together once a combined platform exists is a question nobody has answered yet.

The honest advice for anyone signing up today: do it because you want to watch the content that’s available now, not because you’re making a long-term bet on what the service will look like in 2027.

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