All's fair in love and 'War' — a well-cast, classy-trashy divorce drama

HBO's War is intended to be an anthology series about two dueling London law firms. The first season stars Dominic West and Sienna Miller as a high-profile couple in the midst of a very nasty divorce. Justin Downing/Sky/HBO hide caption

Dominic West specializes in playing men who feel victimized by the consequences of their own actions. One of his signature lines as Jimmy McNulty on The Wire was, "What the f*** did I do?" The line was often delivered not in the sense of, "Oh no, what did I do?" But instead, as an indignant, "Why am I getting yelled at? What did I do?" And while West's take on then-Prince Charles in The Crown put him in a completely different setting, he retained that sense of arrogant bafflement, affronted whenever he sensed that he was being perceived as the bad guy.

In HBO's new series War, West plays Morgan Henderson — a tech mogul, not a cop or a royal. But he, too, has trouble seeing his own fingerprints on his problems, including his marriage. Morgan is married to Carla Duval (Sienna Miller), an A-list actress whose fame is starting to teeter, inevitably, as she ages. As the first episode begins, they both seem aware that the marriage is on its last legs, but no one has acted — at least not openly — quite yet. Then, at a dinner without Carla where he's receiving an award, he spies a beautiful woman in the crowd. Things progress. Someone acts.