March weekends are for zero plans and big-reward TV show binges. Luckily, HBO Max has a bottomless bucket of titles to address both of those elements, and all you have to do is look. Oh, but you don’t want to look? Fine, you’ve come to the right place.
I’ve pulled three shows that will hopefully make your queue—a ridiculously hilarious and surprisingly sweet pirate show, a beautifully haunting and uplifting post-apocalyptic mini-series, and a gritty FBI-versus-bikers crime drama with Mark Ruffalo.
3
Our Flag Means Death
Consider this a warning shot off the port bow—a new season of Our Flag Means Death is, sadly, not coming. Canceled after just two seasons, this edgy and hilarious swashbuckling comedy based on the real-life story of actual 18th-century British aristocrat, Stede Bonnet, triggered a massive fan rescue campaign that netted 87,000 petition signatures and a massive billboard in Times Square. Alas, the series was unable to find a new port to call home.
Well, both seasons are available in all their glory on HBO Max, and you should watch them anyway because it’s a wild and fabulous show. Flight of the Conchords’ Rhys Darby plays Bonnet to perfection—a bumbling rich man having a midlife crisis, who gives up his fancy life to become “The Gentleman’s Pirate.” Stede is clearly out of his element and depth on the open seas, with hilarious consequences, but things get even funnier and more interesting when he crosses paths with the legendary pirate Blackbeard (Taika Waititi), and romance ensues.
Darby and Waititi’s chemistry is unmistakable, the supporting cast and cameos are spot-on (Will Arnett, Nick Kroll, Fred Armisen!), and the series became a landmark for LGBTQ+ representation. It’s a shame that it couldn’t be saved.
2
Station Eleven
I had heard of the brilliant, Emmy-nominated miniseries during the pandemic when it was originally streaming, and I suppose I didn’t want to give it a try because, well, we were kind of living it. Enough time has obviously passed, so why not? Station Eleven has lived up to all the critical acclaim, seven Emmy nominations, and general praise, and you should put it on your watch list, now.
The 10 episodes of this Max Original series do not offer what you might expect from a post-apocalyptic show. Surprisingly, and refreshingly, instead of it all being doom and gloom, it offers a more hopeful outlook on what humanity might aspire to. Taking place across two timelines, Station Eleven begins when a devastating flu outbreak collapses civilization, wiping out most of Earth’s population. In the early episodes, we meet Jeevan (Yesterday’s Himesh Patel), an EMT-in-training, who saves and protects a young actress named Kirsten (Matilda Lawlor) when the world goes dark.
The non-linear show then jumps ahead and back over 20 years, as the world starts to heal and shape into something very different, but good. Kirsten is older (played by Mackenzie Davis), and she’s part of The Traveling Symphony, a nomadic troupe going around performing Shakespeare, and through flashbacks we uncover the fate of Jeevan, how he was separated from Kirsten, and how the charismatic, dangerous figure known as the Prophet (Daniel Zovatto) ties into the whole story.
Station Eleven isn’t about zombies or survival at the end of a baseball bat; it’s more about hope and why humanity is worth surviving for.
1
Task
If you like slow-burn, character-driven dramas in the vein of Mare of Easttown, but are also into gritty, FBI and cop crime stuff like The Wire, then try Task. The Mare of Easttown comparison is apt, because it comes from the same mind, Brad Ingelsby, who’s crafted a bruising but emotional story of damaged Philly FBI agent Tom Brandis (Mark Ruffalo), who’s thrust back into the field while still mourning the death of his wife.
He’s tracking a series of robberies of biker-gang stash houses, which is already a bad idea, but the masked guys pulling them off end up killing members of the gang. Brandis is hot on the trail of the robbers, led by family man gone wrong, Robbie (the excellent Tom Pelphrey), who’s just trying to make a better life for his kids. The problem is, the bikers are getting close, too, and I’ll give you one guess who’s going to go easier on Robbie when they find him.
Season one of Task runs seven episodes of tense, cat-and-mouse, biker-vs.-FBI action, with genuine heart. Rotten Tomatoes has the HBO Max series scored at an incredible 96% critics’ rating.
There’s such an excellent historical deep well of upper-echelon movies and TV shows on HBO Max, that it’s hard to know what’s good and what’s not. Hopefully, Paramount doesn’t muck it all up, but in the meantime, enjoy these solid picks for a weekend or weekday binge.
Subscription with ads
Yes, $10.99/month
Simultaneous streams
2 or 4
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.