The best shows on Max (formerly HBO Max) right now

It’s the 100^th season for the New York Giants, and fans of the NFL team will get an inside glimpse into all the preparation the team undergoes to gear up for a new season. Camera crews follow them around in this edition of Hard Knocks: Offseason with the New York Giants to capture moments as General Manager Joe Schoen navigates the preseason. This includes footage from the NFL Scouting Combine, NFL Draft, and team minicamps. This season shakes up the format a bit, shifting focus to the business side of the equation versus the locker room, which has historically been the highlight in previous seasons of this series.

The reality sports documentary series Hard Knocks, which has been airing for 19 seasons since 2001, has covered numerous teams over the years and earned 18 Sports Emmy Awards through its run. Narrated by Lvev Schreiber, it’s a must-watch for football fans, with this edition especially geared toward Giants supporters.

Mark Wahlberg executive produced this comedy  drama that’s loosely based on his life, and it became a huge hit, airing for eight seasons. The central character in Entourage is Vincent Chase (Adrian Grenier), a young actor who becomes massively famous and brings his group of childhood friends, aka his “entourage,” along with him for the wild ride. He hires his best friend. Eric (Kevin Connolly). as his manager. Joining the pair in their antics are Vinny’s older half-brother, Johnny “Drama” (Kevin Dillon), a much less successful actor, and friend, Turtle (Jerry Ferrara), who both try to find purpose, but mostly love to reap the benefits of Vinny’s fame. Jeremy Piven, meanwhile, stars as Vince’s egotistical and temperamental agent Ari Gold.

The episodes follow the expected exploits of four young men thrust into a world of fame, money, women, and excess in every sense of the word. It’s raunchy, deeply entertaining, and features tons of celebrity cameos through the seasons. Whether you love Wahlberg or not, Entourage stands on its own as a slick series about the dark and dirty temptations of fame.

Mike Judge has come a long way from his Beavis and Butt-Head days. While Judge has previously directed live-action comedy films, Silicon Valley gave him an even bigger platform to expand his mastery of the medium. The series follows programmer Richard Hendricks (Thomas Middleditch) as he and his friends try to launch a new startup company called Pied Piper. Their trials and tribulations run the gamut from hilarious to dramatic. Judge and his co-creators assembled a talented supporting cast that includes T.J. Miller, Kumail Nanjiani, Martin Starr, and Amanda Crew, nearly all of whom have gone on to even bigger things after the show’s six-season run.

Silicon Valley is heavy on tech industry references, so anyone who understands the space will get every insider reference and joke, and theorize about what real-life tech CEOs, billionaires, and investors various characters were likely modeled around. But even those who aren’t so entrenched in the tech space will laugh the entire way through at the absurd “nerd” humor.

Pedro Pascal stars in this post-apocalyptic drama as Joel, a smuggler transporting a teenage girl named Ellie (Bell Ramsey) out of a quarantine zone and across the U.S., two decades after the end of modern civilization. Through the brutal journey, the two must rely on one another more than they realized, but Joel has his own demons, tormented by his past.

Considered to be the largest TV production ever in Canada (it was filmed in Alberta) and the first from HBO to be based on a video game, The Last of Us boasts an impressive supporting cast as well. This includes Gabriel Luna (Marvel’s Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D.) as Tommy, Joel’s younger brother and a hopeful former soldier, and Merle Dandridge as Marlene, head of a resistance movement, who is reprising her role from the video games. Guest stars include Murray Bartlett (The White Lotus) and Nick Offerman (Parks and Recreation) as survivalists, and Melanie Lynskey (Yellowjackets) as the leader of a revolutionary movement.

It’s probably a good thing that the chain of White Lotus luxury resorts isn’t actually real. Because the vacations in seasons 1 and 2 just go completely off the rails. And that’s before the dead bodies start showing up!

Initially planned as a single season, The White Lotus follows an odd assortment of guests and the beleaguered hotel staff who labor to keep them happy. It works really well as both a comedy and a drama, which is why we’re currently checking in for the new episodes streaming each week. You don’t necessarily have to watch season 1 to enjoy season 2, both with different settings and (almost) entirely new casts.