If you ever had any doubt about how corporate mergers can make for strange bedfellows — and it’s 2023, so you should have gotten this memo long ago — one need look no further than After the Bite, a documentary programmed to play like the answer to the generally unasked question, “What would happen if Warner Bros. Discovery chief David Zaslav forced HBO to participate in Shark Week?”

Presumably, the creative origins of Ivy Meeropol’s (Bully. Coward. Victim. The Story of Roy Cohn) film and Discovery’s annual celebration of all things toothy and ichthyological were completely separate. But following its initial airing on HBO, After the Bite will migrate over to Max, where it can be promoted next to such Shark Week titles as Serial Killer Red Sea Attacks, The Shark of the Moral Universe Bends Toward Carnage and Great White Fight Club (only two of those are real).

Discovery...