There was a lot of buzz around We Own This City. Ensemble piece spearheaded by Jon Bernthal is about the rise and fall of the Baltimore Police Department's Gun Trace Task Force – and the corruption and moral collapse that befell an American city in which the policies of drug prohibition and mass arrest were championed at the expense of actual police work. It is currently number 3 globally on HBO Max and actually only 4th in the US, behind the recently released new seasons of Barry and Flight Attendant, or rebounding Winning Time: The Rise of the Lakers Dynasty. The thing is, We Own The City is not yet available in all HBO Max markets (the platform is delaying new shows and episodes by days or even weeks from the original release date in the US), which is possibly caused by the fact that this is HBO production and not the HBO Max Original programming.
The global TV show chart at HBO Max is still being dominated by Polish crime thriller The Thaw which got the full attention of European audiences while tying for that first position with Buscando a Frida, last year’s Telemundo Original that is adaptation of the Chilean telenovela, that captivated the most of South American market. As you can see, the global picture can be fragmented as the platform is trying to serve tailor-made content (The Thaw is HBO Max Original, HBO is known for creating/supporting local productions in Europe for decades). Some say that the age of the total dominance of American TV is over. We would not jump that shark just yet, it is the complicated release schedule of HBO, that is currently wreaking havoc on the numbers.