'C.B. Strike' Moves to HBO and HBO Max for Season 3

WarnerMedia's expansion under its short-lived time with AT&T required it to build up tentpole franchises to compete with Disney's Marvel, Star Wars, Pixar, etc. Ahead of the launch of HBO Max, those franchises seemed to be DC Films, Game of Thrones, and Harry Potter. The Wizarding World had expanded outside its original eight films to encompass the Fantastic Beasts series. And HBO also stepped up to pick up other works by the author, including the Michael Gambon starrer The Casual Vacancy and the adaptation of the C.B. Strike mystery series by "Robert Galbraith."

The latter, based on the not very good mystery Coromoran Strike mystery novel series, turned out some average-at-best TV serials, which HBO decided weren't worthy of its premiere network status and were shipped off to the wilds of Cinemax, which most people forget has original programming in the first place. (Sorry, Warrior.) But in what may be proof the new Discovery Networks regime is serious about reviving the Wizarding franchise and creating a Harry Potter TV series, the latest C.B. Strike series (which aired in December 2022 on the BBC) is now going to be on HBO and HBO Max, as part of the continuing unsuccessful attempts to make Monday nights happen.

In the U.K., the series, called Strike, had run five seasons, and the books continue to sell, and the production studio cannot have been happy to have WarnerMedia bury it like this. But as all things related to the author are deeply controversial in the states and only grow more as time goes on, it is a surprising turn to see the new owners promote the series like this when it doesn't have a large following in America. Discovery's people could easily have moved it to TNT or TBS or dropped it altogether, and no one would have noticed. That it did not and feels the need to push the show on both flagship network and streaming service suggests someone is trying to make nice.