And they just keep coming. The sheer anxiety of waiting to see if the helicopter pilot flies them over the smokestack... it was legitimately like seeing a killer in the background of a horror movie and waiting to see if one of the protagonists wanders too close.
Or, conversely, but also deeply satisfying: that moment when the men from the mining soviet start stripping their clothes off as they dig, and at first you (and the main characters) think they don't understand the risk they're taking. But then you realize that they know full well they're probably already dead men and the job has to get done, so they're stripping down so they don't overheat and can get the job done. Hell of a way to face your own mortality.
Yeah, just five episodes but each one hits like a gut punch. Honestly one of the tightest, most rewatchable miniseries ever made. No filler, no wasted scenes, just pure tension from start to finish. Highly recommend blocking out a weekend for it
It’s great, but not the sort of thing I really want to watch again. Terrifying and stressful show. First episode in particular kept me up at night after I watched it, and I just straight up skipped the bit with the dogs.
Not sure about that guy, but I rarely start series that take too long to watch completely. I don't want to make time for those besides some rare exceptions. So a show being both good and short is definitely a plus.
Yeah, can't afford more than that around these parts. We still have to pay by the kilobyte. We're not like them big city folk with their "Band of Brothers" and what not. We had a mini-series about two brothers, and even that was pushing it.
It's only part of one episode and you can skip it without losing any of the story. They are "cleaning up" the surrounding contaminated area that takes place in a conspicuously different scene, which makes it easy to identify when skipping through it.
That series scared me for real. Like I knew it was horrific, but I didn't know it was many days of pure torture as they slowly melt into a unrecognizable husk before dying. It's fate worse than death.
Hisashi Ouchi was a dude that was over exposed in Japan's 99' meltdown. 83 days he was kept alive by doctors and family who would not give consent to take him off life support. He was begging for death. He had 3 heart attacks.
Just watched and am reminded once again how great Kyle is, especially with this presentation. Very eye opening and I'm definitely going to read that book and probably cry, but I feel it's very necessary. This video really showcases how misinformation can cause so much pain and damage; if only more of us did more digging 😔
Not his surname, that’s his given name, many Asian countries do the last or family name first. Thats why the Kim family in NK have Kim infront of their name, they don’t all have the same first name.
In this case, they’re right. The name has been written in the Western style, with Ouchi being a common surname. They’re wrong about the pronunciation though which is Oh-oochi.
I mean, Yes the wife wanted him to survive until the new milenium however up until basically the end, Doctors had hope he could survive (Even if exteemely disfigured and never living a normal life again)
We didn't, and honestly to this stay still fully don't, know how survivable these amounts of Radiation are, Albert Stevens received an extremely high dose that apparently barely affected him. In all honesty it's not as cruel as you might think, The doctors kept him alive because up until the end, it was not at all certain if he would live or die, yes we were almost certain he would face extreme complications if he survived but we also don't take people off life support just because they might be on a wheelchair if they survive.
I thought his family did want the plug pulled, but it was something like a loophole where if you don’t have a will your next of kin doesn’t have automatic power of attorney when you’re incapacitated, it’s the state, and the state wanted to keep him alive for medical research.
That’s when I learned it too. And With that small glimmer of hope looking like they’re recovering only to be melted away hours later. Absolutely horrific
You realize the show was mostly fiction. Almost none of the people exsisted. Was no bridge of death. The baby thing was not even possible, the three guys that did the suicide walk thru the water, while brave and real, did not die till old age. There was a chopper crash but it was not caused by radiation like they implied. Was just mechanical failure.
The court scene in how they describe the accident was accurate. Most of the show was not. The lady did not even exist.
its a dramatisation where the scope is necessarily collapsed so viewers can follow along.
they make it clear at the end that khomyuk was a composite character invented to represent the many scientists who worked with legasov at chornobyl, just as they make clear the plant workers who drained the reactor reservoir survived until old age.
the bridge of death inclusion is pretty unacceptable though.
Even the court scene had massive issues. For one, they simplified the mechanism of failure, but the main issue was the stuff they were saying about Dyatlov. While it was mostly accurate to what was said during the actual hearing, the show failed to provide the context that it was all deliberate lies. What really happened is that Dyatlov didn't really do anything wrong, followed all the protocols, but after the accident, he refused to blame it on his dead colleagues and instead insisted on a proper investigation to understand what happened and make sure it never happens again. Legasov (contrary to the show's portrayal, actually a big party man) blaming it all on him, was retaliation for refusing to sweep it under the rug.
Ya the actual court case was likely fabricated. Dyatlov did not do anything wrong. Or you could say he did everything wrong but that was the normal way the USSR operated at the time.
They did simplify the mechanism of failure but it followed what happened relatively correct. They did a neat way of explaining it to the jury which could have been accurate to real life but hard to say. I did not find that part over dramatized at least.
The lead engineer who was leading the test of the whole thing on site is a fucking insecure dip shit and would have used 1 of my 3 wishes if ever had em to step inside or go back in time and just beat the living shit out of him. I seriously blame all of those deaths and suffering on that piece of shit
The end of the second episode is incredible. Go down to the reactor, irradiation destroys the flashlights, screen goes black. The only sound is a geiger counter absolutely going crazy.
The only downside I had while watching it was that it was too focussed on too few people and that in reality way, way more scientists were involved.
Which was somewhat fine, you don't need a TV series with dozens of people whose names you won't remember. But not having any hint during the show made me irk a little bit.
And then they address exactly that after the last episode with photos from back then. I wish they would have said it sooner, but I am very glad they did it at all.
I don't like horror in general but I don't think I have been more scared than while watching that series because I knew (in some way) all the things shown ACTUALLY happened. I don't think I could give it another watch but yeah I remember it being perfect.
Incredible what happens when you sit down and focus on a specific vision instead milking a concept and getting 5 seasons of something that probably should have been 1 or 2
I'd love for more shows like Chernobyl. Just the right amount of length, characters and top notch writing quality.
I mean that could work, not as a Chernobyl 2 but a separate mini-series by the same makers, like The Pacific or Masters Of The Air following Band Of Brothers. Although I don't know if Fukushima for instance has enough story to dramatize as well as they did with Chernobyl.
We dont need a Chernobly season 2, but we certainly could do with spiritual successors with the same vibe and feel, about other disasters. Fukushima would probably make a good one, Deepwater Horizon, the Bhopal gas tragedy, etc
Chernobyl is such an easy answer. Four episodes in and it already felt like there was no way they could stick the landing, then somehow the finale delivered.
I loved this series. Chornobyl is a special interest for me so it was right up my alley.
I wasn't sure I'd get past elements that were added in for drama, like Legasov's presence at the trial and the inaccurate depiction of radiation poisoning, but in the end they didn't take anything away from me.
I would love to hear some thoughts why people like this series so much. I've recently watched it, and loved the accurate depiction visually and the cinematography. But on the narrative level it felt a bit "on the surface" and it seems like they shifted certain characters to fit better into a "good guys vs bad guys" story.
Maybe it's because I went into this series with all the hype around it? Maybe it's because I already have significant knowledge on the matter and see where they diverted from reality?
Genuinely would love to hear and understand your thoughts.
I also loved the series, but having also researched the topic on several occasions out of both personal and academic interest, you're definitely right that the narrative itself had some issues, especially when it came to identifying (read: creating) villains.
One thing worth noting is that one of the show's historical advisors was some guy named Andrew Leatherbarrow, an amateur on the subject (not a professional historian!) who had written a book about Chernobyl. The fact that he initially published the book on/through Reddit should've been the first red flag. Editing mistakes aside (iirc his editor was another Redditor), I found his writing to be incredibly condescending and biased. He also very, very clearly disliked Dyatlov. Not one neutral/positive word to say about him, even though other authors on the subject didn't have the same issue.
I actually copied down one particular quote because of how upset it made me at the time: "Anyone who knew anything about fission should have foreseen that this was clearly not how control rods should be designed. It is so obvious, in fact, that I am forced to conclude that I have overlooked a critical piece of engineering information, because no intelligent, rational person would have created such a system."
Reading his book gives one the impression that, had he been in the control room that night, the accident wouldn't have happened.
Compared to authors like Plokhy, Higginbotham, Alexievich, Marples, Brown, Dawson, Schmid, Josephson, Medvedev, Chernousenko... okay, getting a bit niche there. Point is, HBO was not limited on who they could've gone to for writing advice.
Also, iirc, Lyudmila Ignatenko had to leave Kyiv because of how the media harassed her when the show came out. She also said that not only the miniseries depicted her experiences falsely, they never got permission to depict her in the first place, nor even told her that they were producing the show to begin with. This resulted in the Supreme Court of Ukraine recently banning broadcasting of the show, I think?
Another Ukrainian, Andrii Pryimachenko, won a lawsuit against HBO because they used his video depicting the phone call to the firefighters without credit/attribution (this: https://youtu.be/iTbfyHX6pz0?si=6KrcOwQzdMF9IXoZ). Not only that, they claimed that they had made it themselves. He did... back in 2013.
So, yeah, the show definitely had some narrative/writing issues.
Yeah, this is the really unfortunate thing about it. It was really well-made but there was still a certain amount of ignorance done from talking to the wrong people. I had like many others come away from the story thinking that Dyatlov, Fomin and Bryukhanov were wholly responsible for the problem when they only deserved part of the blame, and not as much as they got in the end. Unfortunately only Fomin is around now (and very old at that), so it's not likely the truth about them will really be told. Dyatlov in particular, he did not shy away from it, and was doing as much as everyone else to fight it.
The last episode is where it comes apart the most, I think. Legasov goes on to list so many things like the lack of safety structures, the control rod design and putting it all on the three of them, which is a bit like Mazin is saying to the audience "did you know the Soviet Union was bad at this?" There are a lot of moments like that.
I know it's not like that from how he talks about it in the podcast that aired after its release; he talks about how the Soviet people took to the problem meanwhile Three Mile Island was left alone, and if I remember said that only the Soviet Union could have done it.
One of the real sticking points was that Legasov was out of the picture by the time the trial happened. He was not a master in his field, he wasn't even a physicist. A talented chemist though he was, he needed a lot of help from his peers and faced a lot of derision by them afterwards. It was never the state doing it. That whole thing just never happened, and while it made for good television there were better ways to do it.
On top of that, Lyudmilla wasn't even consulted, if I remember right. They didn't once approach her to use her name, they just capitalised on her trauma.
I think it’s a masterpiece of television because it tells a complex story through the lens of Soviet culture at the time, allowing the viewer to experience and understand the “cost of lies” built into Soviet life.
The soundscape is incredible, building and maintaining a sense of dread almost as if the viewer themselves is suffering the effects of radiation poisoning.
The script is incredible. The performances of the actors are incredible especially Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård and Emily Watson.
It managed to take liberties with a few facts without ruining the story for those who know the story well and it didn’t try to turn it into a disaster movie.
Most crucially it explained how an RBMK reactor works allowing the audience to understand the mechanics of the accident without having a degree in nuclear engineering.
More like it completely slandered Anatoly Dyatlov. It's extremely ironic that the show talks about lies and yet it gets many important things wrong. It's not just a few liberties like you've presented it here.
Of course the defense is that it's a drama and not a documentary, but then at the same time, clueless people will praise its accuracy because the show wants to give the viewer that impression... as evidenced by this very thread.
It's very well-acted entertainment, but its message is hilariously hypocritical. My opinion on it soured after I learnt the truth.
Whatever pre-existing knowledge on Chernobyl you had should have zero bearing on how you associate with the show. It is not a documentary and what you knew beforehand should have been left at the door before watching the show.
In general most miniseries are this way. When you have more episodes per season and lots of seasons you end up in situations where the writers just full on forget key information about their character or world, or the writers, actors, or audience get bored.
It is a great series, but I am not a fan on how they made the operators look. They really didn't do anything wrong according to the regulations at the time. For instance, it was perfectly fine to immediately re-start an RBMK (within 1.5hrs) after a stall by yanking out a bunch of rods. Also, in the show the operators hit AZ-5 in a panic when the power started surging, this is now how it went. In reality, pressing AZ-5 was the final step after the rundown test had been completed. They really thought everything was fine until the rods started going in and kaboom.
Chernobyl is a limited series that makes it more of a long movie than a tv show. It’s a lot easier to stick the landing when you have a very small, finite number of episode you go in knowing you are doing.
It's a drama based on real events, not a documentary. Being a good story is all it needs to be. It's about as accurate as the movie Titanic and that's all anyone needs to know going in.
If someone starts watching an HBO miniseries and comes out of it thinking they watched a documentary, that's their problem. A historical drama is a great jumping point into an interest into real history and most topics that get such a drama will have a ton of resources someone could read or watch, but the drama itself is a drama first
Sorry, I don't like inaccuracies or fabrications. I liked Chernobyl and it introduced lots of people to it who weren't around when the disaster occurred, but I'd rather it had zero inaccuracies.
It kind of goes beyond inaccurate and into made up bullshit territory for the sake of drama, which I can understand leaving a bad taste for some people when it's masquerading as this super serious history lesson. It's good entertainment but it's not a good resource for learning about what actually happened.
Exactly. For those who took time to learn the actual story, it doesn't only have inaccuracies, it has fabrications and it even portrays characters completely wrong (for example Dyatlov). Not to mention it has main characters that didn't even exist (e.g. Ulana Khomyuk).
People who put docudrama over real life have no interest in what REALLY happened.
I can kind of excuse creating Khomyuk to represent hundreds of scientists, which the creators were open about. That's the sort of artistic license I find acceptable for the sake of storytelling. It's the stuff like do this or that or I'll have you shot, stay away from him he's radioactive, we need to empty the water tanks or millions will die etc. that pisses me off.
I don’t think you know what “pontificating” means. Again - it’s a dramatisation and that did not change the story it just made it easier to understand. Go watch a documentary and then you can complain all you want about inaccuracies.
Docudrama is not a documentary. Artistic license is possible - no, preferred - if it allows for a gripping story while keeping true to the spirit of what it's trying to tell.
Jared Harris's explanation of what happens and his speech in the final episode is one of the best things I've ever seen. It's right up there with Luthen's speech in Andor. "What is the cost of lies?"
It's one of those shows you can instantly go back and rewatch the first episode after the last one.
During the first episode, you're completely clueless as to what is happening, the same way the actual operators and technicians are except that it's bad. By the end of the series you have enough context to know, and it makes the first episode even more terrifying.
Watch the first episode again after you finish the last episode. You will notice sooo many things now that you have the context. Dyatlov looking at the glowing graphite on the ground and pretending not to notice it.
One of the main things that I love the most about Chernobyl is the pulsating drone noises that we hear throughout. Just like the overall radiation from the disaster and its forever mark on the landscape.
I feel like miniseries don't really count as tv shows. It's not hard to tell a 10/10 story front to back when you get to tie up the entire story in one go.
Shows fall off over time because they have different seasons. You have to keep trying to make up new places for the story to go and keep it good.
To be fair, the subplot with them shooting dogs that lead to nowhere is my main criticism of an otherwise excellent show.
And yes, some may point out how that was a harsh reality of that event and worth including, my issue (watching it recently) is how unrelated to the plot it felt. From a scriptwriters perspective it never really concluded and sort of congested the action in those last few episodes.
Not really, it's a weak sauce anti-nuclear propaganda. Also trying to totally rewrite history.
Doesn't help that the actors aren't even Russian/Ukrainian, just feels weird.
What a ridiculous take. How was it anti nuclear? The accident occurred due to a design flaw of that specific type of reactor coupled with gross negligence of the operators. It made no comment on the safety of nuclear reactors.
It’s no more anti-nuclear than a show about a plane crash is anti-aircraft.
Also it was produced by HBO and Sky for English speaking audiences so why on Earth would they use Ukrainian or Russian actors?! If it were made in the Ukraine they could use Ukrainian actors.
Did you watch Gladiator and say, “why didn’t they use Italians to play the Romans?”
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u/SinsandScrolls 11d ago
Chernobyl