Best thriller & drama shows on Max, ranked.

In April 1986, the city of Chernobyl in the Soviet Union suffers one of the worst nuclear disasters in the history of mankind. Consequently, many heroes put their lives on the line in the following days, weeks and months.

A cynical expatriate American cafe owner struggles to decide whether or not to help his former lover and her fugitive husband escape the Nazis in French Morocco.

When the police in a German city are unable to catch a child-murderer, other criminals join in the manhunt.

After a night of partying with a woman he picked up, a man wakes up to find her stabbed to death and is charged with her murder.

A model discovers a retired judge is keen on invading people's privacy.

An old couple visit their children and grandchildren in the city, but receive little attention.

Two young Swedish children in the 1900s experience the many comedies and tragedies of their lively and affectionate theatrical family, the Ekdahls.

A small-town police detective tries to keep her professional and personal lives separate while investigating the death of a teenage mother.

Follows the daily activities of the Inmates at the Oswald Maximum Security Correctional Facility (aka "Oz" for short), an unusual prison where its criminal inhabitants face challenges head on behind bars and do all they can to sta...

A bureaucrat tries to find meaning in his life after he discovers he has terminal cancer.

In the midst of the Russian Revolution of 1905, the crew of the battleship Potemkin mutiny against the brutal, tyrannical regime of the vessel's officers. The resulting street demonstration in Odessa brings on a police massacre.

Ciro disregards tradition in his attempt to become the next boss of his crime syndicate. The internal power struggle puts him and his entire family's life at risk.

The Roy family is known for controlling the biggest media and entertainment company in the world. However, their world changes when their father steps down from the company.

An elderly man and his dog struggle to survive on his government pension in Rome.

In post-war Italy, a working-class man's bicycle is stolen, endangering his efforts to find work. He and his son set out to find it.

Guido seeks peace after his success but faces pressure from past collaborators. As he struggles with creativity, he reflects on his life and past romances.

An orphaned young man in India pursues his dream of becoming a writer while navigating life's challenges and personal growth.

Mary Shelley reveals the main characters of her novel survived: Baron Henry Frankenstein, goaded by an even madder scientist, builds his monster a mate.

A tale of ambition, family, love, and war set in the midst of the Japanese Civil Wars of the sixteenth century.

A drama about one of New York's most prestigious ad agencies at the beginning of the 1960s, focusing on one of the firm's most mysterious but extremely talented ad executives, Donald Draper.

Impoverished priest Harihar Ray, dreaming of a better life for himself and his family, leaves his rural Bengal village in search of work.

A guide leads two men through an area known as the Zone to find a room that grants wishes.

The daily lives of healthcare professionals in a Pittsburgh hospital as they juggle personal crises, workplace politics, and the emotional toll of treating critically ill patients, revealing the resilience required in their noble ...

Follows US president Josiah Bartlet and his administration as they tackle various political issues in order to maintain peace and harmony in the nation.

A lonely widow meets a much younger Moroccan worker in a bar during a rainstorm. They fall in love, to their own surprise and to the outright shock of their families, colleagues, and drinking buddies.

A young ballet dancer is torn between the man she loves and her pursuit to become a prima ballerina.

The apparently-perfect lives of upper-class mothers of students at a prestigious elementary school unravel to the point of murder when a single mother moves to their quaint California beach town.

A young African-American man grapples with his identity and sexuality while experiencing the everyday struggles of childhood, adolescence, and burgeoning adulthood.

Two sisters find out the existence of their long-lost mother, but the younger cannot take the truth of being abandoned as a child.

Meeting a stranger in a railway station, a woman is tempted to cheat on her husband.

Two shoeshine boys in postwar Rome, Italy save up to buy a horse, but their involvement as dupes in a burglary lands them in juvenile prison; the experience take a devastating toll on their friendship.

Recently released from a mental hospital, Karin rejoins her emotionally disconnected family in their island home, only to slip from reality as she begins to believe she is being visited by God.

A care-free girl is sold to a traveling entertainer, consequently enduring physical and emotional pain along the way.

Following his father's death, a boy leaves home to study in Calcutta, while his mother must face a life alone.

When death is your business, what is your life? Laced with irony and dark situational humor, the show approaches the subject of death through the eyes of the Fisher family, who owns and operates a funeral home in Los Angeles.

After living a life marked by coldness, an aging professor is forced to confront the emptiness of his existence.

An aging widower arranges a marriage for his only daughter.

A woman struggles to find a way to live her life after the death of her husband and child.

A group of nuns struggle to establish a convent in the Himalayas, while isolation, extreme weather, altitude, and culture clashes all conspire to drive the well-intentioned missionaries mad.

A knight returning to Sweden after the Crusades seeks answers about life, death, and the existence of God as he plays chess against the Grim Reaper during the Black Plague.

In Charles Dickens' classic tale, an orphan wends his way from cruel apprenticeship to den of thieves in search of a true home.

Decades of a love triangle concerning two friends and an impulsive woman.

The story of the discovery of the AIDS epidemic, and the political infighting of the scientific community hampering the early fight with it.

A war-hardened general, egged on by his ambitious wife, works to fulfill a prophecy that he would become lord of Spider's Web Castle.

A little boy is held captive in a room with his mother since his birth, so he has never known the world outside.

A single mother and the manager of a roadside motel do their utmost to maintain the innocence of a six-year-old girl's life.

A surgeon causes a car accident which leaves his daughter disfigured and goes to extreme lengths to give her a new face.

Depicts the end days of a decadent zamindar (landlord) in Bengal, and his efforts to uphold his family prestige even when faced with economic adversity.

Travis Henderson, an aimless drifter who has been missing for four years, wanders out of the desert and must reconnect with society, himself, his life, and his family.

An unhappily married couple attempts to find direction and insight while vacationing in Naples.

When an aristocratic woman known only as "Madame de . . ." sells a pair of earrings given to her by her husband in order to pay some debts, she sets off a chain reaction of financial and carnal consequences that can end only in de...

Two neighbors form a strong bond after both suspect extramarital activities of their spouses. However, they agree to keep their bond platonic so as not to commit similar wrongs.

A lonely widowed housewife does her daily chores, takes care of her apartment where she lives with her teenage son, and turns the occasional trick to make ends meet, but something happens that changes her safe routine.

The family of an older man who runs a small sake brewery become concerned with his finances and his health after they discover him visiting an old mistress from his youth.

In the late '50s, young Ingemar learns a lot about life and himself when he is sent away from his sick mother to live with his aunt and uncle in a town full of eccentrics.

Anthology series in which police investigations unearth the personal and professional secrets of those involved, both within and outside the law.

A young man and his wife struggle within the confines of their passionless relationship while he has an extramarital romance.

Life at home changes when a house-wife from a middle-class, conservative family in Calcutta gets a job as a saleswoman.

The head of a Japanese theatre troupe returns to a small coastal town where he left a son who thinks he is his uncle, and tries to make up for the lost time, but his current mistress grows jealous.

A nurse is put in charge of a mute actress and finds that their personae are melding together.

A newsroom undergoes some changes in its workings and morals as a new team is brought in, bringing unexpected results for its existing news anchor.

A romance between young Parisians, shown through a series of vignettes.

A young German boy faces the problems of the tough life in the immediate post-WWII Berlin.

Divine G, imprisoned at Sing Sing for a crime he didn't commit, finds purpose by acting in a theatre group alongside other incarcerated men in this story of resilience, humanity, and the transformative power of art.

An aspiring photographer develops an intimate relationship with an older woman in 1950s New York.

An angel meets Peter Falk, and loves a French trapeze artist in Berlin.

Marty Mauser, a young man with a dream no one respects, goes to hell and back in pursuit of greatness.

A kabuki actor's mistress hatches a jealous plot to bring down her lover's son.

Cassavetes' jazz-scored improvisational film explores interracial friendships and relationships in Beat-Era (1950s) New York City.

Although wife and mother Mabel is loved by her husband Nick, her mental illness places a strain on the marriage.

A woman recounts the lifelong friendship and conflicts with a girl she met at primary school in Naples during the early 1950s.

During the late 19th century, a strict religious community in a Danish village takes in a French refugee from the Franco-Prussian War as a servant to the late pastor's daughters.

Lucy Honeychurch shares a brief romance with George Emerson in Florence. Yet as she tries to move on with her life and look for marriage elsewhere, can she truly forget the events of that summer?

When a woman dying of cancer in early twentieth-century Sweden is visited by her two sisters, long-repressed feelings between the siblings rise to the surface.

A schoolteacher struggles to raise his son Ryohei by himself, having neither money nor future prospects.

A servant in the house of Wuthering Heights tells a traveler the unfortunate tale of lovers Cathy and Heathcliff.

A couple pick up a hitchhiker on the way to their yacht. The husband invites the young man to come along for their day's sailing. As the voyage progresses, the antagonism between the two men grows. A violent confrontation is inevi...

A woman disappears during a Mediterranean boating trip. During the search, her lover and her best friend become attracted to each other.

Jep Gambardella has seduced his way through the lavish nightlife of Rome for decades, but after his 65th birthday and a shock from the past, Jep looks past the nightclubs and parties to find a timeless landscape of absurd, exquisi...

A frigid young housewife decides to spend her midweek afternoons as a prostitute.

Prince Hamlet struggles over whether or not he should kill his uncle, whom he suspects has murdered his father, the former king.

Twelve episodic tales in the life of a Parisian woman and her slow descent into prostitution.

After treating her mental illness, crime reporter Camille Preaker returns to her hometown to solve the murder of two young girls. However, she is forced to face and deal with her own demons too.

A visionary architect flees post-war Europe in 1947 for a brighter future in the United States and finds his life forever changed by a wealthy client.

Stage version of the season 3 episode "Hartsfield's Landing"

Jimmy Cooper loathes his dead-end job and his working-class parents. He seeks solace with his mod clique, scooter riding, and drugs, only to be disappointed.

Maria marries Hermann Braun in the last days of World War II, only for him to go missing in the war. Alone, Maria puts to use her beauty and ambition in order to find prosperity during Germany's "economic miracle" of the 1950s.

The story of courtesan and dance-hall girl Emma Hamilton, including her relationships with Sir William Hamilton and Admiral Horatio Nelson, and her rise and fall, set during the Napoleonic Wars.

Set in New York in 1900, The Knick centers around the groundbreaking Knickerbocker Hospital.

During the Great Depression, an Oklahoma farm boy and a charismatic minister learn that they are key players in a proxy war being fought between Heaven and Hell.

In Lagos, Nigeria, tragedy and fate intervene as two people try to better the lives of their families.

At a top secret research facility in the 1960s, a lonely janitor forms a unique relationship with an amphibious creature that is being held in captivity.

Two women kill samurai and sell their belongings for a living. While one of them is having an affair with their neighbor, the other woman meets a mysterious samurai wearing a bizarre mask.

A renowned actress teeters on the edge of a breakdown as she counts down the days toward a big Broadway opening.

An illegal Chinese immigrant falls behind on payments on an enormous smuggling debt. Ming Ding has only until the end of the day to come up with the money.

A devoted wife is visited by her mother, a successful concert pianist who had little time for her when she was young.

Three years after the disappearance of 2% of the global human population, a group of people in a small New York community try to continue their lives while coping with the tragedy of the unexplained nature of the event.

During a rural summer picnic, a few students and a teacher from an Australian girls' school vanish without a trace. Their absence frustrates and haunts the people left behind.

The beginning of the pontificate of Lenny Belardo, alias Pius XIII, the first American Pope in history.

A beautiful young woman takes her father's place as the prisoner of a mysterious beast, who wishes to marry her.