Ask anyone to name the greatest TV series of all time, and HBO/HBO Max titles will crush the top of that list faster than you can say, “You know nothing, Jon Snow.” With prestige shows spanning The Sopranos to The White Lotus, the bar HBO has set is still what the others are jumping for, and their formidable library offers options of great TV, new and old.

As we head into the final week of April through May 3rd, the pics are strangely, perfectly timed. One is a sobering historical drama whose real-world subject just marked its 40th anniversary yesterday. One is the fantasy phenomenon that redefined prestige television, and it just got some exciting release news for one of its spinoffs today. Last is a beautiful multi-world steampunk saga with three seasons you can make a meal of.

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Chernobyl

A haunting miniseries about the worst nuclear disaster in history

April 26, 2026, marked the 40th anniversary of the worst nuclear disaster in the history of the world, making this essential HBO miniseries required viewing this week. When Chernobyl premiered on HBO in May of 2019, it rocked critics and audiences, including me, with its devastating account of the 1986 catastrophe, the cleanup efforts that followed, and, most compellingly, the people involved and the politics that got in the way.

Created and written by Last of Us writer Craig Mazin, the five-part series dramatizes the disaster to great effect, and centers on Soviet scientist Valery Legasov (Foundation‘s Jared Harris), who led the investigation of the disaster; Deputy Prime Minister Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård), sent to downplay the incident until he saw the devastation; and nuclear physicist Ulana Khomyuk (Emily Watson), a scientist working with Legasov to expose the truth of what happened and how. The series is stark and jaw-dropping as it depicts the meltdown and explosion that released a radioactive plume that spread across much of the Northern Hemisphere, and that devastated the nearby town of Pripyat, with many of its people dying immediately from fatal radiation doses.

Chernobyl was an Emmy darling that year, being nominated for 19 awards and winning 10, including for Outstanding Directing for Johan Renck. It has a whopping 95% critics’ score on Rotten Tomatoes, and serves as a poignant reminder of the event and the lives it affected.

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Game of Thrones

George R.R. Martin’s fantasy epic that changed television forever

The release of the new teaser trailer and season three release announcement for its sister series, House of the Dragon, today got me all nostalgic for the epic series that started it all and changed TV forever. Not only have I read George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire books twice (come on, George, give us Winds of Winter​​​​​​, already), but I’ve been through all eight seasons of HBO’s crushing series several times, and I think I might be ready for another go. How about you?

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For the uninitiated (I know you’re still out there), Game of Thrones is creator David Benioff and D.B. Weiss’s rendering of Martin’s expansive world of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros and the battle for its coveted seat of power, the Iron Throne. It boggles the mind how Martin conceived a fictional universe so detailed and full of timeless and iconic characters and warring houses—chief among them (to start) are the blonde-haired dragon riders, the Targaryens, the conniving and ruthless Lannisters, and the powerful and honorable wolves from the North, the Starks.

Game of Thrones built a reputation early on for shockingly killing off key characters (no one is safe), its epic production scale that rivaled any full-scale motion picture, and some of the craziest plot twists and jaw-dropping episodes in TV history. While the final season drew all kinds of ire and vitriol from overzealous fans, it remains the winningest scripted series in Emmy history, earning 59 wins from 164 nominations and, of course, spawning two spinoffs and counting, including House of the Dragon and the latest hit, A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms. If you’re looking for pure escapism and the best world-building ever put on television, it doesn’t get better than this.

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His Dark Materials

A beautiful steampunk fantasy trilogy worth digging into

Do not click past His Dark Materials thinking it’s a kids’ show—if you like steampunk fantasy, give it a chance, you’ll be pleasantly surprised. Based on renowned British novelist Philip Pullman’s fantasy trilogy (Northern Lights, The Subtle Knife, and The Amber Spyglass), this three-season series that ran on HBO from 2019 to 2022 is a sophisticated journey through parallel worlds that is loved by both young adults and grown-ups.

The series follows Lyra (Logan’s Dafne Keen), a young orphan who lives at Oxford College, but not our Oxford, this one is in a parallel world where human souls live outside their bodies as animal companions called daemons. When Lyra’s best friend Roger goes missing, she sets out on her epic journey to the vast and wild North to find him. Her trek puts her at odds with the mysterious and powerful Magisterium and their agent, Mrs. Coulter (Ruth Wilson), who have been capturing children and severing them from their daemons.

Helping Lyra along the way is a fantastical crew, including flying adventurer Lee Scoresby (Lin-Manuel Miranda) a warrior polar bear named Iorek Byrnison, and her uncle, Lord Asriel (James McAvoy), a scientist conducting inter-dimensional research that could change the world forever. His Dark Materials is a beautifully created adventure series that has an overall Rotten Tomatoes score of 83%, and a satisfying final season that hit 90%.

HBO Max’s back catalog could keep you busy for years, and these three shows barely scratch the surface. If these picks have got you craving more, we’ve got all kinds of streaming recommendation lists for you at How-To Geek.

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HBO Max is a subscription-based streaming service offering content from HBO, Warner Bros., DC, and more. In 2025, the service re-branded itself as HBO Max after having previously cut “HBO” from its name.