Chernobyl

Premise

Chernobyl dramatizes the story of the April 1986 nuclear plant disaster which occurred in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union, telling the stories of the people who were involved in the disaster and those who responded to it. The series depicts some of the lesser-known stories of the disaster, including the efforts of the firefighters who were the first responders on the scene, volunteers, and teams of miners who dug a critical tunnel under Reactor 4.

The miniseries is based in large part on the recollections of Pripyat locals, as told by Belarusian Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich in her book Voices from Chernobyl. Researchers have documented Alexievich's insertion of her own words into the testimonies of her interview subjects in this and others of her books, as well as her extensive revision—even from one edition to the next—of her interviews, which suggests that her works should not be taken as verbatim oral history.

Cast and characters

Main

Jared Harris as Valery Legasov, the deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute brought in to aid cleanup efforts.

Stellan Skarsgård as Boris Shcherbina, a Council of Ministers' deputy chairman.

Emily Watson as Ulana Khomyuk, a nuclear physicist from Minsk. Khomyuk is a fictional composite character based on the many scientists who investigated the accident.

Paul Ritter as Anatoly Dyatlov, the deputy chief engineer at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.

Jessie Buckley as Lyudmilla Ignatenko, the wife of Vasily Ignatenko.

Adam Nagaitis as Vasily Ignatenko, a Pripyat firefighter and first responder to the Chernobyl fire.

Con O'Neill as Viktor Bryukhanov, the director of Chernobyl.

Adrian Rawlins as Nikolai Fomin, the chief engineer at Chernobyl.

Sam Troughton as Aleksandr Akimov, the night shift supervisor at Chernobyl.

Robert Emms as Leonid Toptunov, the senior engineer at Chernobyl.

David Dencik as Mikhail Gorbachev, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

Mark Lewis Jones as Vladimir Pikalov, the commander of the Soviet chemical forces.

Alan Williams as Charkov, the KGB's first deputy chairman.

Alex Ferns as Andrei Glukhov, the mining crew chief.

Recurring

Adam Lundgren as Vyacheslav Brazhnik, the senior turbine operator at Chernobyl.

Karl Davies as Viktor Proskuryakov, a senior reactor control engineer trainee at Chernobyl.

Donald Sumpter as Zharkov, a Pripyat executive committee member.

Billy Postlethwaite as Boris Stolyarchuk, the senior unit No. 4 control engineer at Chernobyl.

Joshua Leese as Igor Kirschenbaum, a senior turbine control engineer at Chernobyl.

Nadia Clifford as Svetlana Zinchenko, a doctor treating Vasily Ignatenko and others with radiation sickness.

Jamie Sives as Anatoly Sitnikov, the deputy chief operational engineer at Chernobyl sent to inspect the exploded core.

Baltasar Breki Samper as Alexei Ananenko, one of the volunteers who drained water in Chernobyl's basement to prevent an explosion.

Philip Barantini as Valery Bespalov, one of the volunteers who drained water in Chernobyl's basement to prevent an explosion.

Oscar Giese as Boris Baranov, one of the volunteers who drained water in Chernobyl's basement to prevent an explosion.

Douggie McMeekin as Aleksandr Yuvchenko, a senior engineer-mechanic on duty the night of the explosion.

Michael Socha as Mikhail, a resident of Pripyat and father of a young baby who are both present on the bridge watching the fire.

Guest

Natasha Radski as Russian news reader

Jay Simpson as Valeriy Perevozchenko, the foreman in the reactor section

Michael Colgan as Mikhail Shchadov, Soviet Minister of Coal Industry

James Cosmo as a miner

Peter Guinness as Major Burov

Hilton McRae as Milan Kadnikov, the judge presiding over the trial of Dyatlov, Bryukhanov, and Fomin

Kieran O'Brien as Valery Khodemchuk, the night shift main circulating pump operator at Chernobyl

Alexej Manvelov as Garo, an Armenian soldier who accompanies Bacho and Pavel

June Watson as Old Woman

Josef Altin as Soldier

Josef Davies as Janek

Production

Development and writing

In 2014, writer Craig Mazin began researching for the project by reading books and government reports from inside and outside the Soviet Union. Mazin also interviewed nuclear scientists to learn how a reactor works, and former Soviet citizens to gain a better idea of the culture in 1986. Mazin also read several first-person accounts to bring additional authenticity to the story. He explained, "When you're reading the personal stories of people who were there—people who lived near the plant, people who worked at the plant, people who were sent to Chernobyl as part of the effort to clean it up—in those individual accounts, that's really where the story came alive".

Mazin's interest in creating the series originated when he decided to write something that addressed "how we're struggling with the global war on the truth right now". Another inspiration is that he knew Chernobyl exploded, but he did not know why. He explained, "I didn't know why, and I thought there was this inexplicable gap in my knowledge ... So, I began reading about it, just out of this very dry, intellectual curiosity, and what I discovered was that, while the story of the explosion is fascinating, and we make it really clear exactly why and how it happened, what really grabbed me and held me were the incredible stories of the human beings who lived through it, and who suffered and sacrificed to save the people that they loved, to save their countrymen and to save a continent, and continued to do so, against odds that were startling and kept getting worse. I was so moved by it. It was like I had discovered a war that people just hadn't really depicted, and I became obsessed". Mazin said that "The lesson of Chernobyl isn't that modern nuclear power is dangerous. The lesson is that lying, arrogance, and suppression of criticism are dangerous".

In preparation for the miniseries, Mazin visited the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone. Mazin made the decision in the early stages not to use Russian or Ukrainian accents, and instead, have the actors use their natural accents. Mazin explained, "We had an initial thought that we didn't want to do the 'Boris and Natasha' clichéd accent because the Russian accent can turn comic very easily. At first, we thought that maybe we would have people do these sorts of vaguely Eastern European accents—not really strong but noticeable. What we found very quickly is that actors will act accents. They will not act, they will act accents and we were losing everything about these people that we loved. Honestly, I think after maybe one or two auditions we said 'OK, new rule. We're not doing that anymore'". Mazin also did not cast any American actors, as that could potentially pull the audience out of the story.

Casting

Simultaneously with the initial series announcement, it was confirmed that Jared Harris would star in the series. On March 19, 2018, it was announced that Stellan Skarsgård and Emily Watson had joined the main cast, marking their second collaboration after Breaking the Waves. In May 2018, it was announced that Paul Ritter, Jessie Buckley, Adrian Rawlins, and Con O'Neill also had joined the cast.

Filming

In April 2018, principal photography began in Lithuania. Initial filming started on May 13, 2018, in Fabijoniškės, a residential district in Vilnius, Lithuania, which was used to portray the Ukrainian city of Pripyat, since the district maintained an authentic Soviet atmosphere. An area of densely built panel housing apartments served as a location for the evacuation scenes. Director Johan Renck heavily criticised the amount of diverse and eye-catching modern windows in the houses, but was not concerned about removing them in post-production.

At the end of March, production moved to Visaginas, Lithuania, to shoot both the exterior and interior of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, a decommissioned nuclear power station that is sometimes referred to as "Chernobyl's sister" due to its visual resemblance and the nuclear reactor design used at both Chernobyl and Ignalina, both being RBMK nuclear power reactors. In early June 2018, production moved to Ukraine to shoot minor final scenes. The filming of Chernobyl took 16 weeks. The series has a reported production budget of $40 million, as part of a $250 million deal between HBO and Sky. According to series cinematographer Jakob Ihre, various Soviet-era films–namely Andrei Rublev, Stalker and Come and See–inspired the look of the miniseries.

Music

The musical score was composed by Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir. In August 2018, she began recording the score with Chris Watson at the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, where the series was being preliminarily shot. She used the recordings from the power plant, deciding not to depend on instruments and pre-recorded material to create the score, as she wanted to experience from a listener's perspective on what it is like to actually be inside of a power plant. The original score album was released by the record labels Deutsche Grammophon and WaterTower Music on May 31, 2019, with a vinyl edition released by Decca Records on September 6, 2019.

Historical accuracy

The series was praised in the media for being exhaustively researched, but some commentators noted inaccuracies or liberties were taken for dramatic purposes, such as Legasov being present at the trial. The first episode depicts Legasov timing his suicide down to the second (1:23:45) to coincide with the second anniversary of the Chernobyl explosion. Legasov actually died by suicide a day later. The epilogue acknowledges that the character of Ulana Khomyuk is fictional, a composite of Soviet scientists. Journalist Adam Higginbotham, who spent a decade researching the disaster and authored the non-fiction account Midnight in Chernobyl, points out in an interview that there was no need for scientists to "uncover the truth" because "many nuclear scientists knew all along that there were problems with this reactor—the problems that led ultimately to an explosion and disaster". Artistic license was also used in the depiction of the "Bridge of Death", from which spectators in Pripyat watched the aftermath of the explosion. The miniseries suggests that the spectators subsequently died, and depicts them with radiation burns, a claim which is now generally held to be an urban legend.

The series also discusses a potential third steam explosion, due to the risk of corium melting through to the water reservoirs below the reactor building, as being in the range of two to four megatons. This would have been physically impossible under the circumstances, as exploding reactors do not function as thermonuclear bombs. According to series author Craig Mazin, the claim was based on one made by Belarusian nuclear physicist Vassili Nesterenko about a potential 3–5 Mt third explosion, even though physicists hired for the show were unable to confirm its plausibility.

The series' production design, such as the choice of sets, props, and costumes, has received high praise for its precise accuracy. Several sources have commended the attention to even minor setting details, such as the use of actual Kyiv-region license plate numbers, and a New Yorker review states that "the material culture of the Soviet Union is reproduced with an accuracy that has never before been seen" from either Western or Russian filmmakers. Oleksiy Breus, a Chernobyl engineer, commends the portrayal of the symptoms of radiation poisoning; Robert Gale, a doctor who treated Chernobyl victims, states that the miniseries overstated the symptoms by suggesting that the patients were radioactive. In a more critical judgment, a review from the Moscow Times highlights some small design errors: for instance, Soviet soldiers are inaccurately shown as holding their weapons in Western style and Legasov's apartment was too "dingy" for a scientist of his status.

Release

The miniseries premiered on May 6, 2019, on HBO. In the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, it premiered on May 7, 2019, on Sky Atlantic.

Home media

The miniseries was released on Blu-ray and DVD on October 1, 2019. A 4K Ultra HD Blu-ray was released on December 1, 2020.

Reception

Critical response

Chernobyl received widespread critical acclaim. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the series has an approval rating of 95% based on 103 reviews, with an average rating of 8.9/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Chernobyl rivets with a creeping dread that never dissipates, dramatizing a national tragedy with sterling craft and an intelligent dissection of institutional rot." On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 82 out of 100, based on 27 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".

Reviewers for The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and the BBC observed parallels to contemporary society by focusing on the power of information and how dishonest leaders can make mistakes beyond their comprehension. Sophie Gilbert of The Atlantic hailed the series as a "grim disquisition on the toll of devaluing the truth"; Hank Stuever of The Washington Post praised it for showcasing "what happens when lying is standard and authority is abused". Meera Syal praised Chernobyl as a "fiercely intelligent exposition of the human cost of state censorship. Would love to see similar exposé of the Bhopal disaster". David Morrison was "struck by the attention to accuracy" and says the "series does an outstanding job of presenting the technical and human issues of the accident."

Jennifer K. Crosby, writing for The Objective Standard, says that the miniseries "explores the reasons for this monumental catastrophe and illustrates how it was magnified by the evasion and denial of those in charge," adding that "although the true toll of the disaster on millions of lives will never be known, Chernobyl goes a long way toward helping us understand [its] real causes and effects." In a negative article titled "Chernobyl: The Show Russiagate Wrote," Aaron Giovannone of the American left-wing publication Jacobin wrote that "even as we worry about the ongoing ecological crisis caused by capitalism, Chernobyl revels in the failure of the historical alternative to capitalism, which reinforces the status quo, offering us no way out of the crisis."

The miniseries was well received by some critics and audiences in Russia. Vladimir Medinsky, Russian culture minister, whose father was one of the Chernobyl liquidators, called the series "masterfully made" and "filmed with great respect for ordinary people". It was reported that Russian state-run NTV television channel has been producing its own "patriotic" version of the Chernobyl story in which the CIA plays a key role in the disaster. The Russians then claimed that the series in question had been in production since before HBO's miniseries and was not created in response to it. An apparent trailer for the series was uploaded to YouTube but was later deleted following negative reaction from the Russian viewers.