Chernobyl is an unmissable drama (Picture: Sky) Do you know what actually happened at Chernobyl? HBO and Sky Atlantic’s new drama recounts the disaster under a horrifying, gripping lens, in one of the best new shows of the year. While the April 1986 Chernobyl accident is one of the most noted nuclear disasters in history, the name has become synonymous with dark tourism and cheap horror movies for recent generations. This new drama, created and written by Craig Mazin (Identity Thief, The Hangover Part II), spotlights the real horror in the disaster; a power struggle between politicians and scientific experts with thousands of lives hanging in the balance. Sound familiar? The show isn’t subtle about the comparisons to climate change prescient today, and while we might like to believe we learn from history’s mistakes, this acts as a timely and worthwhile reminder of the danger of misinformation when coupled with political agendas. Chernobyl is a multi-layered horror (Picture: Sky) The first episode kicks off after the fallout of the disaster, as a troubled physicist Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) kills himself in his apartment. We’re then taken back 24 months prior preceding the catastrophe in 1986, as civilians in Chernobyl, Ukraine are suddenly alerted to a concerning boom from the nearby power plant, with smoke bellowing into the sky. The show tackles perspectives on the disaster from multiple levels. The workers inside the power plant are at the mercy of their boss who is in denial about the explosion’s extent, sending them to the reactor’s core, and their death, despite numerous reports contradicting him. His adamant stance that the situation can be contained is to protect himself from Soviet Union officials, who want to uphold an image of communist idealism on the world stage. There’s a borderline comedic edge to the extent of their denial, which treads a delicate line in amplifying your disbelief, and horror, over dismissal of the facts. One scene sees Soviet officials celebrate leader Mikhail Gorbachev after being told the situation is under control, which strikes the right balance between highlighting their shocking naivety without coming off like a mocking cartoon. It does this by keeping the people affected in constant focus. As the firefighters outside assist at the power plant, with radiated reactor debris everywhere, the show becomes an agonising crash in slow motion. They’re treating the job like any other emergency, unknowingly handling radioactive materials while weighing up how to tackle the blaze. It’s painful to watch, with the consequences of this misinformation ricochet gradually showing itself in gruesome, harrowing detail. Jared Harris stars in Chernobyl (Picture: Sky) Despite the horror on-screen, it’s hard to pull your eyes away because it’s so beautifully shot. Johan Renck, whose previous credits include music videos for Madonna, Kylie Minogue, and episodes of Breaking Bad, treats the power plant like a dominating omen over the city. A later shot sees citizens stand in awe of the spectacle on a bridge as radioactive debris floats onto their skin through the air. It’s mesmerising, infuriating and terrifying; the sweet spot where Chernobyl’s multi-level nightmare wallops you at once. Some might find Chernobyl too bleak to enjoy, but very few shows land with such a startling and unsettling first impression. As entertainment, a retelling of the disaster, and a warning of scarily relevant dangers, Chernobyl is a staggering, unmissable achievement which will haunt you for weeks. Chernobyl airs on Sky Atlantic Tuesdays at 9pm. MORE : Inside the real Chernobyl disaster, as HBO and Sky release their drama series MORE : HBO’s Chernobyl: Trailer, synopsis, date and how to watch<doc-sep>If there was ever a show that should not be binged in a single sitting, it's HBO's Chernobyl -- a five-part limited series that chronicles the tragic events during and after the explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986. It's a harrowing and stomach-churning tale of bureaucratic negligence, ego, paranoia, and bravery set against the backdrop of the Cold War. It's one of the most horrific scripted series out there... And it's bloody brilliant. Loading Chernobyl may lack the supernatural element found in other terror-inducing series like Netflix's The Haunting of Hill House and Hulu's Castle Rock , yet it's still utterly terrifying - precisely because it really happened. The limited series doesn't need ghosts or ghouls to frighten you. Instead, Chernobyl uses its most powerful tool... The truth. Or as close as we're going to get from what writer, creator, and executive producer Craig Mazin ( The Hangover Part 2 ) has painstakingly researched in order to tell his story.The horror in Chernobyl is expertly captured by director Johan Renck ( Breaking Bad ), as he takes the viewer on a nightmarish journey filled with death, fear, and confusion. In the series premiere, titled "1:23:45," Renck keeps the panic intimate - never showing you more than a few characters inside the plant at a time. The explosion takes place late at night, so the facility isn't fully staffed and most of the supervising heads of department are at their respective homes. And even though you don't get to know all of the characters very well, every death feels deeply personal. Chernobyl Miniseries Gallery 19 IMAGES 12 Cancelled TV Shows We'd Love to See Revived 13 IMAGES In one particular scene, shortly after the explosion, a group of workers is sent deeper into the facility to ascertain what happened to the core. And while you can't see the radiation invade their bodies, you can feel its presence with the help of ominous orchestral music, and Renck's excellent work behind the camera, which makes the cramped spaces of the nuclear plant feel overbearing and perilous, even before the radiation's devastating effects take hold. The overall situation is enraging, as we learn more about the mistakes made by the people in charge.In a historical account about a nuclear disaster, there are few things scarier than a group of suit-wearing bureaucrats sitting in a room making decisions about other people's lives. While chaos ensues at the plant, the politicians, along with other high-ranking officials, debate policy and talk about keeping the story under wraps and protecting the strength of the nation from outside ridicule. All of their concerns are about saving face until one Soviet nuclear scientist named Valery Legasov (played with gravitas by Jared Harris), says what we are all thinking, "Hey everyone! If we don't fix this thing we're probably all going to die." I'm paraphrasing, but you get the idea.Harris' Valery spreads the gospel of nuclear doom and gloom like a pro. Every word the veteran actor speaks feels like it's laden with five-hundred-pound bricks. Stellan Skarsgård's brash Boris Shcherbina, who accompanies Valery on his trip to Chernobyl, is a welcome respite to the good doctor's melancholic demeanor. Boris is a complex character, who, like his bureaucratic counterparts, wants to dismiss the incident as a minor setback. However, something about Valery's warning convinces him to look deeper, even if some of his methods of "getting the job done" are costly.And as if Chernobyl wasn't already stacked with accomplished actors, two-time Oscar nominee Emily Watson (Gosford Park) joins Harris and Skarsgård as the Soviet nuclear physicist Ulana Khomyuk. As expected, Wilson easily holds her own amid the predominately male cast. If Valery is the "we're all going to die" voice, Ulana is the one who says, "OK, this is how we're going to fix it." Together, they make an unlikely, but entertaining trio as they try to prevent the situation from becoming worse.Despite some graphic scenes involving the harrowing effects of nuclear radiation, which can be hard to stomach, the show allows some respite from the grimness of the catastrophe through the impactful moments of heroism sprinkled throughout. While the suits have political power, it's the everyday workers, fireman, nurses, and doctors who are on the ground trying to save lives. In a later episode, Skarsgård's Boris delivers an emotionally stirring speech to a group of men about sacrificing their lives to save others, and how it's in their blood to serve their nation honorably as they have always done. Even though I can't directly relate to what it's like to grow up in that part of the world, the powerful camaraderie among the men is palpable. But perhaps that's Chernobyl's greatest message - even in the midst of tragedy, hope, bravery, and community still endures.<doc-sep>The trailer for this new five-part dramatisation of the Chernobyl nuclear disaster did not inspire a great deal of confidence. Children frolicked in thick drifts of ash while bassy Hans Zimmer-ish rumbles sounded like sirens. Soviet firemen stared up at the nuclear blaze. Emily Watson looked worried in corridors. Had HBO and Sky contrived to sex up the meltdown? There are subjects you can turn into glamorous event television, but the worst nuclear disaster in history is not necessarily one of them. I shouldn’t have worried. This superb opener, which dramatises the events of 26 April 1986 and their immediate aftermath, manages to be both weighty and gripping. Given the different moving parts, with action scenes at the reactor alternating with Soviet committee discussions about how much of the truth to reveal, it’s impressive that this feels so coherent, the disparate elements held in place by a spare and oddly beautiful aesthetic. 30 TV shows that jumped the shark Show all 30 1 /30 30 TV shows that jumped the shark 30 TV shows that jumped the shark Parks and Recreation Parks and Recreation’s sixth season was filmed while Chris Pratt was on the cusp of becoming a global megastar. To keep him involved, the crew had to head to where the actor was filming his other, bigger projects (hence the season begins with a double episode in London, where he was filming Guardians of the Galaxy). That season also saw Rob Lowe and Rashida Jones leave the show, leading to some patches that were never really covered over. Still, the final episode was still a delight, with Amy Poehler’s Leslie Knope meeting Michelle Obama and getting her dream job in Pawnee. But then they made a seventh, completely unnecessary season a few years later… which we should all forget exists. NBC 30 TV shows that jumped the shark Happy Days The show that birthed the phrase “jumping the shark”. Season five of Happy Days saw Fonzie literally jumping over a shark – a moment so absurd that critics were left asking whether the writers had run out of material. The moment became the turning point for Happy Days as the quality gradually began to decline, the inclination of which got steeper after Ron Howard left after season seven. ABC 30 TV shows that jumped the shark Heroes Thanks to stellar reviews and enticing advertising, Heroes quickly became one of the most-popular shows on television in 2006. However, while the charming first season – which centred on a group of people coming to terms with their super-human powers – was a fast-paced addictive ride, the second was a meandering mess. The first few episodes contained so much filler that viewers turned off in their droves. Season three fared no better, and by the conclusion of season four only 4.41 million people were still watching – down from the 16.97 million who watched the season two premiere. NBC Universal 30 TV shows that jumped the shark The X Factor There was once a time when every winner on The X Factor was pretty much guaranteed a Christmas number one. It became such a monotonous routine in the UK that music lovers protested by getting Rage Against the Machine’s “Killing in the Name Of” to the coveted top spot in 2009. Coincidentally, the following years have seen the X Factor’s ratings begin to dwindle, mainly thanks to viewers becoming bored of the same sob stories being wheeled out every year. To fix this, Simon Cowell attempted to switch up the judges at an increased rate, scraping the barrel in 2015 by bringing on Nick Grimshaw (the same year that Dermot O’Leary stepped down as presenter, to be replaced by television’s most awkward duo, Caroline Flack and Olly Murs). Despite Louis Walsh, Nicole Scherzinger and Sharon Osbourne (and Dermot) coming back the year after, the damage had already been done. ITV 30 TV shows that jumped the shark Community Stars often outgrow their shows. Midway through the fourth season of Community, Donald Glover, who played Troy, left to pursue a music career as the rapper Childish Gambino. Of course, that did not turn out too badly, with Glover now having a few Grammys on his mantelpiece. Unfortunately, Community was never the same without him, and the dominoes kept falling after that. Chevy Chase also left, while Dan Harmon stopped writing for the show. As a result, the final two seasons received awful reviews. NBC 30 TV shows that jumped the shark Big Brother Big Brother was a big deal. The first few seasons spawned celebrities and managed to attract millions of viewers. While originally a strange social experiment put on by Channel 4, the show devolved into a middling reality TV series where contestants would do anything to prolong their 15 minutes of fame. When the show moved to Channel 5, it was only another knock on the death knell. Channel 5 30 TV shows that jumped the shark Dallas The team behind Dallas were so desperate to bring back Patrick Duffy's character Bobby Ewing that they made the entire ninth season one long dream sequence. Of course, they had initially not known the entire season would be a dream, as Duffy had voluntarily left to pursue other acting jobs. Obviously, things did not go well for the actor, and the writing team put him back into the show – at the expense of viewers, who felt understandably short-changed by the events of 31 episodes being reversed. Note for TV writers: “It was all a dream” is not a good TV trope. CBS 30 TV shows that jumped the shark House of Cards Before Kevin Spacey was kicked off the cast following more than 40 allegations of sexual assault, House of Cards was feeling stuck in the mud. The Underwoods’ journey to power had been fascinating; their struggle to keep power, not so much. When Spacey was rightly dropped, the writers were forced to press on, with little time to rewrite the script as two episodes had already been filmed and needed completely redoing.<doc-sep>The 1986 nuclear disaster has become synonymous with widespread tragedy, but the people behind the series wanted to honor the spirit of those who helped contain the consequences. Thirty three years ago, after an explosion at a nearby power plant, the city of Pripyat in (what is now) Ukraine was evacuated. As part of the preparation for the new HBO series “Chernobyl,” writer Craig Mazin visited the abandoned city, just one step in the process of trying to ensure that the five-episode show captured the full scope of the now-infamous disaster. “Our guides, essentially, were two guys that were teenagers at the time [of the explosion]. You get a real sense of it,” Mazin told IndieWire. “The story we’re telling is a Soviet story. It’s a story of the Soviet system, which was terrible. And it is a story of the Soviet citizenry who were the subject of awful visitations by Czars and revolutions and Nazis and Stalin and forced famine, and then Chernobyl. So I wanted to honor that by telling it from the point of view of them. It’s theirs. I don’t know if there’s a better way or even valid way to tell other than that.” Even when tasked with conveying some of the more explicit, tragic aftermath of the reactor malfunction, “Chernobyl” finds insight via the most seemingly mundane of details. “That required kind of both living inside that mind in that culture and sharing the scripts early on with people who grew up in Soviet Ukraine and having them vet through things,” Mazin said. “Insane attention to tiny details, clothing, watches, glasses, everything. Shooting in Lithuania, a lot of our crew were old enough to remember what it was like living in the Soviet Union. They would let us know, ‘You know, if you brought your lunch to work, you would use a briefcase for that. You wouldn’t use a paper bag. '” Liam Daniel/HBO What may stand out to viewers is that no one in the series speaks with a recognizably Russian accent. As Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgard, Emily Watson, and others navigate their respective characters’ place in this unfolding saga, they do so without too much vocal affect. For Johan Renck, who directed all five installments, that decision only emphasized the other elements of their performances that were true to the Soviet experience. “It’s the culture that you need to embrace and it’s really hard to embrace culture without the use of language,” Renck said. “But then, it was trying to find some kind of Soviet behaviorisms, whatever you can do to try to sort of promote a cultural expression and body language and facial expressions. To be honest, one of the tricky parts is that was we were using mostly British actors. Brits are very, very expressive, whereas the Soviet and Eastern European way is much more stern, stone-faced. Vladimir Putin-esque in some way.” Episode 1 of the series begins with one particular tense sequence, showing Valery Legasov (Harris) delivering his final statement on the events at Chernobyl before dying off-screen. “Chernobyl” is certainly not a series that shies away from showing the physical and psychological horror that visited many of the people in the wake of the event. But in that attention to detail and respect for context, Mazin hopes that the show can also find some unexpected beauty in the process. “One of the things about Chernobyl, specifically, is that there is a poetry to reality. The facts themselves are poetic,” Mazin said. “And when you are dealing with poetic facts, like a man is assigned to a task and two years to the day he commits suicide. That is tragic. That is heartbreaking. And it’s poetic. And as a writer you almost are carried through by those symmetries. You never feel like you have to help it in any way, but it is hard.” That opening is also in line with the “Chernobyl” idea that history is worth considering in context. From a storytelling standpoint, it doesn’t make much sense to withhold information as a means of manipulating the audience’s understanding. HBO “I think we were just obsessed with fidelity to a time, a place and truth. If a man is going to die, just tell people he’s going to die. They’re not going to be disconnected from him. They’re not going to not care about him for five episodes,” Mazin said. If all of these sentiments are effectively translated to the final product, it’s largely the result of Renck and Mazin understanding each other’s sensibilities and contributions to the project.”We worked really closely to make sure that we were on the same page. I don’t think we went into any single day of shooting with the two of us imagining a different scene and it was really helpful,” Mazin said. “Craig and I were in great synchronicity on all these kinds of things. We had the luxury of a phenomenal script at the onset,” Renck said. “That is something that is so tremendously rare in my world. That, by itself, created a lot of freedom, so that there was no problem-solving necessary.” Together, the two helped create an opening episode that juggles a number of different perspectives on a fateful night. Between the firefighters charged with containing the blaze at the remnants of a reactor, the bystanders taking in the spectacle of the colorful flames from afar, and the technicians unwittingly dragged into a biological war they’ve lost far before they realize it’s too late, “Chernobyl” becomes a story about what happens to individuals when facing something inexplicable. “For me, the details of the disaster are only valuable in the context of what it did to people. Not just what it did to people who were victimized by it, but also what it required people to do actively,” Mazin said. “For me, that’s why I felt I had to tell this story, because it was like I had found an account of a secret war. And it was astonishing.” “Chernobyl” airs Monday nights at 9 p.m. on HBO. Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news!<doc-sep>
The premiere of HBO’s Chernobyl is powerful, chilling, stomach-churning journey into the horrors of radiation and bureaucratic mismanagement in a crisis. At 1:23 a.m. at a Soviet nuclear power facility in present-day Ukraine, a series of catastrophic circumstances resulted in an explosion in the reactor core that destroyed the building and began venting a radioactive cloud into the atmosphere. But of course, everyone has heard of Chernobyl—it is synonymous with nuclear disaster. And it’s that preexisting knowledge in the cultural subconscious which makes the miniseries premiere so effective. This show finds the horror in a man picking up a rock, and that’s not an exaggeration. Early on in the first episode, one of the firefighters called to extinguish the reactor fire leans down to pick up an oddly shaped piece of debris from the rubble surrounding the exploded reactor building. It’s safe to assume that everyone in the area is insanely irradiated, so pretty much everything the characters interact with is a cause for further anxiety—but he turns it over and reveals the cylindrical imprint which an hour before would have fitted closely around a nuclear fuel rod. He is unknowingly holding in his unprotected hand one of the most radioactive objects in the world. He drops the piece of graphite and walks away, shaking his hand vaguely. A short time later the man is in agony, and when his glove is stripped off we see the horrific radiation burns on his palm—which is only the first sign of the true damage. For what makes Chernobyl so terrifying, and so heartbreaking, is the unseen radiation which seethes out of the burning reactor with every passing second. But the first episode does not begin with the explosion itself. The first scene is exactly two years after the disaster, with the haggard Valery Legasov (played by Jared Harris, and yes, it is time for me to once more take up the cry of give him his Emmy) recounting the events of the disaster to a tape recorder, alone in his dingy kitchen. The cost of lies His narration focuses on the idea of the truth—or more specifically, on how so many lies can make the truth unrecognizable. “What is left then?” he asks. “What else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth, and content ourselves instead with stories? In these stories, it doesn’t matter who the heroes are. All we want to know is: who is to blame?” Legasov is aware, even as he’s telling it, that this is a story which will be told, retold, twisted and manipulated for a long time to come. It touches on the mythic quality of the event, and starts out the series with the assertion that if the truth is now impossible, then this will be a story—and the story that we all know might not be the one closest to the truth. It’s such an important assertion for any historical drama to make: that in the end, any retelling of history will be shaped by what is included and what is omitted by the ones doing the telling. The cover-up begins Chernobyl demands a lot from its audience, and not just in the sense of asking viewers to take its story with a grain of salt. The subject matter itself is at times almost unbearable. Though tapping directly into the drama of the event, it never leaves behind the element of human suffering in exchange for sensationalism. It handles its subject with sensitivity; but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch as the night shift at the power plant, under orders from Antoly Dyatlov, stare straight into the fire-wreathed core of the reactor, buffeted by skin-peeling waves of radiation which will kill them within hours. Almost equally difficult to stomach are the physical effects of the radiation are the actions of those in charge of the disaster. Dyatlov simply refuses to believe that the reactor has exploded—he sends those men into the core to investigate, and when one of them returns, blistered and vomiting, to tell him that there is no core, he looks the man in the disintegrating face and tells him that he’s delusional. He then proceeds to order the day shift called in early, thus sentencing even more people to be exposed to the radiation. It is only when he collapses, hours later, that he seems to finally and forcibly understand what has happened. But not before also dooming Pripyat.