With its pert-buttocked lawyer rumpy-pumpy and gay drug-fuelled toilet cubicle canoodling, but not a whisper of a barrister’s wig or glimpse inside a courtroom until its penultimate episode, War is no Rumpole of the Bailey. But nor does it feel like Silk. It goes in a different direction, is a different shape, from North Square. It’s not middle of the road like New Street Law and it diverges dramatically from The Split.

In fact, George Kay’s glossy, smart, very high-end and thoroughly entertaining new show is quite unlike the British legal dramas that came before it. You could just about call it a grown-up This Life but if you want to put it in proper context – establish precedent, if you will – better to look across the Atlantic to the spiritual home of the legal drama.

We may have had The Law longer than America but the US is somehow on more familiar terms with theirs than we are with ours in the UK. I suspect this is related to having a written constitution (I know: they hardly ever mention it) but that fetishised document is the reason that firms like McKenzie, Brackman, Chaney and Kuzak and Lockhart & Gardner exist (fictionally) and occupy (very nice office) space in my brain.

As do – now – Cathcarts & Sons and Taylor & Byrne. For, from the get-go – the instantly credible names for the firms and its fancy opening titles – War feels very American.

In a way, this should not be surprising as it’s what Kay set out to do. In an interview with Radio Times, he told me “the ambition was to show off aspirational London the way that Ally McBeal showed off Boston… to make a show that makes you want to be there, and be part of the gang. The idea of having two law firms come up against each other as a returnable format was really great. Then these are just places to put characters and then really work on the relationships, and so the legal story becomes a little metaphor for each of the characters' storylines.”

With the first series of War – a second series is already in the can – Kay can consider his mission accomplished, and how. The drama, which pits old school Cathcarts led by Beatrice Ubosi and St John Smallwood (Nina Sosanya and Pip Torrens in fine, malign form) against the more right-on start-up Taylor & Byrne, helmed by husband and wife Nick Taylor and Serena Byrne (an equally impressive James McArdle and Phoebe Fox) – is a triumph, mostly.

In the battle for the spoils in the divorce of harrumphing tech billionaire Morgan Henderson (Dominic West) and brittle film star Carla Duval (Sienna Miller), the firms are populated with a veritable selection box of characters. There’s someone-for-everyone played by an ensemble without a weak link.

And just when you’re deciding if your favourite is Emma Laird or Celia Imrie, Miles Jupp or Nick Mohammed, up pops Archie Panjabi. It’s like when you go to the shop on Boxing Day, replete on Christmas chocolate, only to discover that the Mini Eggs are on the shelves. You make room.

As for showing off an aspirational London, even those of us who actually live in London, are now entertaining a move to War’s shinier, fancier, cleaner London – and not just because flats at the Barbican appear to be affordable. War feels like an American show because it’s so self-assured and confident but it’s resolutely, defiantly, proudly a drama set in London.

Out of necessity, partly. London is the divorce capital of the world. English courts have a reputation for generosity to the financially weaker party in cases of divorce, and from that reputation has grown a whole ecosystem – of silk-suited solicitors, KCs and forensic accountants and relentless investigators and hungry investors.

Real cases – a Russian oligarch's split reportedly costing him over £8 million in fees alone, a musician being told by a judge that his bill of £800,000 was "manifestly excessive" – make clear that Kay isn't exaggerating for effect with War’s jeopardy. If anything, he's underselling it. If, for example, you want Ayesha Vardag, one of Britain’s top divorce lawyers, to watch all eight hours of War for her expert opinion on it, it’ll cost you nearly £10k, on account of her hourly rate (£1,200).

Of course, Vardag’s fee is no doubt viewed as great value by her clients for whom she has won multi-million pound settlements, and saved even more money. In 2010, she won a ruling that made prenuptial agreements legally binding in the UK, thus protecting her then-client’s estimated £100m fortune.

This is the world of War, a world which Kay mines for stories and stakes, delivering delicious plot twists and compelling characters. Like LA Law and Boston Legal before it, War is the sort of show that makes you want to be a lawyer when you grow up – even if the way they operate is pretty appalling.

One of the show’s most melodramatic moments comes in episode one when Carla gets served with divorce papers on the red carpet at her movie premiere. You’d call it outlandish if you didn’t know that actor/director Olivia Wilde was served child custody papers from her ex-fiancé actor Jason Sudeikis while she was speaking on stage at a film convention in 2022.

What Kay understands, and what makes War more than a glossy diversion, is that this industry runs on performance as much as law – the same theatrical instinct he brought to Lupin's elaborate cons. Every negotiation is a piece of choreography; every "reasonable" offer is a threat with better manners. No doubt about it: War has a run of seven impressive episodes. That there are eight episodes in the series is, therefore, a bit of a problem.

Because having put in all this work, dazzled us with brilliance – of the characters, of the city, of the frankly fabulous wardrobes – War stumbles in its finale and, to my mind, screws it all up. What’s the opposite of sticking the landing? Shall we go with: crashing the plane?

I won’t go into too much detail here – it’d be too spoiler-y and, for all its achievements, War deserves to bathe in the positivity it should garner for being the best British legal drama in years.

Suffice to say, for now, that Kay has written himself into a corner. In seeking to redeem everyone and resorting to a deus ex machina moment – which, I admit, is exquisite – War ends up leaving me not so much angry as disappointed. I’d sue, if I knew how.

War begins on Sky and NOW on Friday 2 October 2026. You can sign up to Sky TV from £15 a month.

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