Watch this miniseries.
The HBO miniseries Chernobyl aired its fifth and final episode last week. The verdict: It's great! Definitely not terrible! It is currently the highest rated TV show on IMDb, not that that means anything.
For such a good mini-series, it doesn't have a lot going for it, just in terms of trying to come up with positive things to recommend it. Nothing good happens on the show. Not once. It's about a nuclear disaster in the former Soviet Union, after all. Also, the source of the catastrophe is mostly invisible. You can't see the radiation, only its deadly and gruesome effect. So, there were some hurdles for the show's creators to clear. But they make it work.
Brief aside: It should be noted that this critically acclaimed show—a show about Russian-speaking Soviets in Ukraine—is entirely in English, with the occasional "comrade" thrown in, for some reason. [Ed. note: “some reason” is Screenwriting Law 343.72: ‘The Hunt for Red October’ Rule, and it is a wonderful rule.] I am not at all surprised to find very little criticism of this artistic choice. Much is made about actors playing characters of a different ethnicity or race, or actors reprising a role previously played by someone of a different gender. It’s pandering to a specific group, they’ll argue, to the detriment of the overall product. It’s either “An all-women Ghostbusters? You’re just pandering to the ‘woke’ crowd!” or “Why is lily-white Emma Stone playing a Hawaiian character! Stop the whitewashing!” But when it comes to English, the biggest pander move of all? It’s totally fine! It’s like there is this unwritten acceptance by everyone involved, woke or not—“We’re not reading no stinkin’ subtitles!”
The miniseries is ostensibly about the nuclear disaster, but what makes the show are the characters. Almost all of them based on real-life people, or composites of many real-life people, and how they react to the disaster—how they navigate through the Soviet political apparatus, how they come to accept their fate—this is the heart of a truly great few hours of television.
Fun fact: The writer for Chernobyl is a guy named Craig Mazin. His Rotten Tomatoes page is a hoot. He crapped out one shitty movie after another. Before Chernobyl, his greatest achievement as a screenwriter was Scary Movie 3. His second greatest achievement? Scary Movie 4. Previous sins atoned for, with this Chernobyl series—except for Superhero Movie. There is no atoning for Superhero Movie.
