"War," premiering this week on HBO, is the satisfying story of a divorce, or rather the prelude to a divorce. It's the first installment of an anthology series in which law firms go head to head, or around the back, as lawyers and clients work out extracurricular business of their own. A sort of "Beef" meets "The Good Wife" or "The Good Fight," or whatever legal drama you prefer.

Morgan Henderson (Dominic West), a tech mogul, and Carla Duval (Sienna Miller), a movie star, have been married a good long time, but are growing apart. As we get underway, Morgan, who has made a practice of infidelity, sleeps with a young woman (Rose Williams as Flora Monroe), a friend of Carla's who presents her with an evidentiary Polaroid of the two in bed. (Morgan is asleep.) It's a trap! A honeytrap. And then the lawyers come in.

The bone of contention here is money, of which there is a lot at stake, and you may reasonably wonder why we should care about these rich people's problems, when there's enough dough to keep everyone in diamonds and Ferraris until the revolution comes. Indeed, the divorce itself — though it is part of what will keep viewers returning through the eight-episode series, as the case moves educationally from mediation to arbitration to courtroom — is really a sort of MacGuffin, a device to set characters in motion in an attractive setting. There's some suggestion of trouble at Zephyr, the nontoxic social media site Morgan created and whose purity he jealously guards — as if! — while Carla, though she's got a big new movie out, is approaching the age when female actors struggle to get roles. But however the spoils are divided, Morgan and Carla will continue to live at a level at which the word "comfortable" has no real meaning.

Representing Carla is the young firm of Taylor & Byrne, headed by Nicholas Taylor (James McArdle) and Serena Byrne (Phoebe Fox), who are married and expecting their first child. We're given to understand that losing this case might mean the end of the firm, and the whole business puts a strain on their basically very good union. (They're the secondary heart of the series, or perhaps the primary.) Morgan is represented by Cathcarts, a deep-pocketed organization whose gifts to the series are Pip Torrens as St. John Smallwood, a self-satisfied vituperous bully with overtones of George Sanders as Shere Khan, and Nina Sosanya, a longtime favorite of this department, as the more grounded Beatrice Ubosi. Miles Jupp plays the comparatively hapless David Schill.

For easy identification, each office has been designed as the negative image of the other in a manner that mirrors their respective clients. Taylor & Byrne is new, all glass and light; Cathcarts is dark wood and padded chairs; one assumes that earlier teams have occupied the space going back a century or more. (For all the talk about money, the lawyers' cut never comes up.) Morgan and Carla's apartments are similarly conceived; hers is bright and high-ceilinged, with filigreed plaster moldings and inset tropical murals; his is a stark and dark place, with no sense of being lived in or enjoyed. He opens beer bottles on the edge of what must be an expensive table.

Linking the firms in a way known only to a few is Johnny (Archie Renaux), a young lawyer who, unable to talk himself into a job elsewhere — it doesn't help that his degree is from the University of Michigan — and desperate to please Bella, his patience-losing girlfriend (Honor Swinton Byrne), agrees to be inserted into Taylor & Byrne as a mole for Cathcarts. He's the flawed Shakespearean villain of the piece in whose future lies, what? Comeuppance? Redemption? I won't tell. But this isn't "Succession."

Despite the tension, nastiness, skulduggery and the sadness of people who once loved one another but are no longer happy together, the experience of watching "War" is quite pleasurable. It's the environment perhaps more than the story that draws one in. Under lead director Ben Taylor and director of photography Oli Russell, scenes are staged and shot with cinematic weight without reaching for style. London looks great; crowd scenes are well populated; chaos is properly chaotic. We go to restaurants and cafes, a tailor's, a talk show. Much thought seems to have been directed toward small, telling details — what a plate of cookies might say about the person who served them, who's drinking from a china espresso cup and who's drinking from a paper to-go cup. The costumers have done a great job of supporting the characters; the soundtrack music, by Oli Julian, is unusual enough to notice without overwhelming the action. Pop songs, happily, are left to the end credits.

Above all, one takes pleasure in the cast, the sort of actors who only have to walk in a room to tell you who they are, who make exposition unnecessary. Anyone who has spent much time watching British television (or, for that matter "Ted Lasso" or "The Good Wife") will recognize Sosnaya, Jupp, Celia Imrie and Archie Panjabi as opposing barristers, and Nick Mohammed (not much used, but it's nice to see his face) working for Taylor & Byrne as someone who understands money. The younger players include Aran Murphy as Gabriel, Carla's 16-year-old son and Morgan's beloved stepson; and Taylor & Byrne junior staffers Molly Giordano (Emma Laird) and Saeed Masood (Shaheen Jafargholi), who, though they sit low on the company totem pole, will matter greatly to the plot.

Created by George Kay (who, interestingly, wrote an episode of BBC's "The Hour," titled "Honey Trap"), "War" is well constructed, with smart dialogue that occasionally flirts with the theatricality of Aaron Sorkin (or Noel Coward) but most often flows nicely and naturally. That some narrative moves are obvious, some unconvincing and some just extraneous does not get in the way of a good time. Taken as a whole, this is as much a comedy as a drama, alternating passages of light and dark; characters will change their mind about one another, as the viewer will change their mind about them.

At one point, someone asks whether it's impossible to be a good person and a good lawyer. It's a silly question; I know lawyers who are good people. I assume they are good lawyers.

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'WAR'

Rating: TV-MA

How to watch: 9 p.m. ET Thursdays on HBO and streaming on HBO Max

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