Anyone else watching this? I'm finding it very binge-able. It's a dramatized but mostly historically accurate telling of the events following the explosion and meltdown of a reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant in the Ukraine in 1986. I'm really impressed with the show's ability to re-create Soviet Ukraine from 33 years ago. Everything from the sets to the clothes to the actors feels right. Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgaard, and Emily Watson are the leads. I'm on episode 4 of 5 and I just started watching today!
Apparently the Russians don't like it and are making their own which plays to conspiracy theories about a Western agent being involved. https://crooksandliars.com/2019/06/russia-peeved-over-hbos-chernobyl-so
When I first heard about the HBO series, my mind mixed up Emily Watson with Emma Watson and was very confused as to how she might fit into the story.
It's interesting that the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster was triggered by a safety test. It was the fourth time the plant operators had conducted this particular test in two years. The test had failed each time.
Amazing show, we just finished it after watching it all over the last two nights. Sells the horror of a nuclear disaster in a way rarely depicted on film.
Excellent writing and superb acting, and the final episode--which recounts the accident--is suspenseful even though we already know the inevitable end. There is definitely an "oh shiiiit" feeling as that reactor power reading rapidly climbs...
On the plus side, it may have given Jeremy his mutant power of being able to punch people in the face and then get an Amazon Prime series...
This thread is long but fantastic. A writer who grew up in the Soviet Union comments on each episode as he watches them. Lots of insights into Soviet life and how good a job the show does of replicating it.
The acting and attention to detail was so good you could make an entire series out of this mini-series. Something about the bleakness of the former USSR is binge worthy in 2019.
Morbid realization of things to come under the GOP, perhaps? Seriously, Chernobyl has always fascinated due to the "how the ruins of civilization will look after the end" angle. The flashback mission in Call Of Duty: Modern Warfare where you creep through the ruins to assassinate a dangerous arms dealer (or try to) is haunting to me and other players just for the dead city and not the mission itself.
So, I'm halfway through the first episode. Unfortunately, this is all my mind has done since the first cut to Chernobyl in 1986.
While it isn't the most harrowing scene in the series, the sight that (had I been there) woulda made me lose all bowel control happens in the (IIRC) fifth episode. As the disaster unfolds, one of the technicians is looking over the reactor... ...and sees those square channel caps--each of which weighs nearly 800 pounds--jumping up and down because the water in the reactor tank beneath them is violently boiling. @2:10 in this clip if you don't mind "spoilers"...
Thanks for pointing this show out, @Paladin. Just watched the first episode. Really well done and the idiocy and bureaucracy of it all is jaw-dropping. I really hope they figure out how to get those control rods down and water flowing into the exploded, no-longer-existent reactor core, so that millions of people don't have to suffer from radiation poisoning over the next few decades! (But no spoilers on the ending, please.)
I like how they classify it as an "American" series. Yes, it was aired on HBO but it was joint HBO-Sky (UK) venture and most of the actors and production crew weren't American.
It was some of the best TV I've watched in years. Well worth the 10 hours. Also, the memes have been pretty good. Not great, not terrible.
Finally got around to watching this show. Definitely lived up to the hype. I visited Western Ukraine in June. I would like to go back sometime to see Kiev, and from there it's possible to visit inside the Chernobyl exclusion zone. They say the radiation is harmless if you're just there for a couple hours on a tour, but I wonder if it's worth it. At this point I've been to quite a few Communist and post-Communist states in Asia and Eastern Europe. There is definitely a unique sense of bleakness and haplessness from the people that lingers even today. And yes, this film does capture it.
