It doesn't happen often. A perfect 100% on Rotten Tomatoes is the kind of score that stops scrolling fingers dead in their tracks — and right now, that honour belongs to a little-known HBO Max true crime documentary about a modelling cult that most people have never even heard of.
Bring Me the Beauties: A Model Cult has quietly become the most critically acclaimed new show on HBO Max, arriving in the shadow of two of the platform's biggest series finales — Euphoria and Hacks — and with the juggernaut that is House of the Dragon season three looming just weeks away. And yet, it's this three-part docuseries that's landed the perfect score.
A Cult Story Nobody Knew Existed
So what exactly is it about? Bring Me the Beauties tells the story of Hoyt Richards, once a world-famous model who spent 15 years inside a New Age group called Eternal Values — a cult formed in the 1980s and led by a man named Frederick von Mierers, who claimed to be an alien prophet.
Von Mierers built a significant following, drawing heavily from the glamorous world of modelling, and is said to have absorbed millions of pounds in so-called "contributions" from his devotees. Richards eventually managed to physically escape from the cult's compound in North Carolina, and his account forms the spine of the documentary.
"One reason the docuseries was made was that there was relatively little information on it online. The cult and its leader, von Mierers, don't have so much as a Wikipedia page, and this true crime drama is the most significant exploration of the cult to date."
Von Mierers himself died in 1990 from AIDS-related complications — a diagnosis he kept hidden from his followers. The cult continued operating until around 1999, with Richards' eventual departure, and the money he took with him, widely credited with hastening its collapse.
Where It Fits in HBO Max's Packed Schedule
The series is being released across three Monday evenings. The first episode is already available to stream, with parts two and three dropping on 8 June and 15 June respectively — giving viewers around three hours of documentary content in total.
Despite its critical acclaim, Bring Me the Beauties currently sits at number six in HBO Max's Top 10, tucked behind a handful of reality shows and the two recently concluded prestige dramas. It's a reminder of how easy it is for genuinely brilliant television to get lost in the noise.
Speaking of those bigger shows: Hacks wrapped its five-season run on an impressive 98% Rotten Tomatoes score, cementing its reputation as one of the sharpest comedies of its era. Euphoria, however, ended things on a far sourer note — season three earned a deeply rotten 44% from critics and an even worse 38% from audiences, a steep fall for a series that once dominated the cultural conversation.
The Streaming War You Didn't Know Was Happening
It's not just on-screen where HBO Max is making waves. A new research report from New York PR firm 5W has revealed that HBO Max ranks second only to Netflix in a brand new metric that's fast becoming the battleground for streaming dominance: AI visibility.
The 5W Entertainment & Streaming AI Visibility Index 2026 measured how often AI tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Perplexity, and Google AI Overviews recommend streaming platforms when viewers ask questions like "what should I watch tonight?" or "best streaming service for families?" The results are striking — and counterintuitive.
Apple TV+, despite having a fraction of the subscriber base of rivals like Hulu and Paramount+, ranked fifth overall. Peacock, NBCUniversal's streamer, came in at number eleven — behind even niche arthouse platforms The Criterion Channel and Mubi.
The reason? It comes down not to size, but to the quality of a platform's behind-the-scenes content data.
"The streaming wars are now an answer-box war. Viewers are no longer scrolling Netflix to decide what to watch. They are asking ChatGPT to decide which streaming service to buy and what to put on tonight. The streamers that have built robust editorial metadata, critic-grade descriptions, and structured content authority are winning the answer."
For UK viewers, this matters more than it might seem. As more British households use AI assistants to navigate an increasingly crowded streaming landscape, the platforms that invest in rich, accessible content information will be the ones that get recommended — and ultimately, subscribed to.
What to Watch Next
If you're looking for something to fill the Hacks-shaped hole in your life while waiting for House of the Dragon to return on 21 June, Bring Me the Beauties: A Model Cult might just be the perfect stopgap. It's rare, strange, and utterly gripping — and that 100% score doesn't lie.
