Five Part Miniseries CHERNOBYL Debuts in May on HBO

I will be watching this for Adam Nagaitis and Jared Harris because I miss 'The Terror' so damn much.

I watch everything with Emily Watson in it.

*anything

And the blast goes on,

And the blast goes on...

First Look Trailer For ‘Chernobyl’, Starring Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård, Emily Watson & Jessie Buckley

Want to see this. Hope it’s great.

o dear really? Emily sad face Watson in another pitiful pearlina role? pass

Stellan <3 Emily Watson <3

Chernobyl? Who cares?

Is this based on a book?

r10 I don't think so, no.

This is a great, harrowing book about Chernobyl:

Voices from Chernobyl: The Oral History of a Nuclear Disaster

by Svetlana Alexievich

Why Chernobyl? Why George Goebel?

This begins Sunday night. I’ll be watching!

Why are there no conspiracy theories about Chernobyl? 9/11 conspiracies abound, moon landing disbelievers, flat earthers... but the tinhats seem to have left Chernobyl alone.

Here's the trailer.

The show is too depressing for me to watch. My mom admitted to eating the caesium-irradiated vegetables from her garden while carrying me (despite the official warnings!), which I swear to god explains my chronic fatigue and depression, not to even mention the homosexuality and the six fingers on each hand. Okay, that last one was a joke but fuck the lot of them for being so careless.

The trailer is such a turn-off: the visuals, the sounds, the editing, whatsoever are so jarring and depressing. The worst trailer I've ever watched in a long long time. Looks like what Trent Reznor would have produced after he hadn't had a dump for a month.

PS. Will watch it just for the cast: Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård, Emily Watson, Fares Fares, Jessie Buckley, Gerard Kearns, and that creepy guy from The Killing of a Sacred Deer, Barry Keoghan.

[quote]The trailer is such a turn-off: the visuals, the sounds, the editing, whatsoever are so jarring and depressing.

Oh honey, were you expecting a romcom?

R16, one of the after-affects of cesium ingestion can be heart attacks, heart failure or heart defects. And babies in the womb are drastically more susceptible to even very small amounts of radiation.

My suggestion is, as you age, have your heart checked out regularly. And take care of your health.

25 minutes in and I have a major knot in my stomach.

Nobody else on the east coast is watching?

I taped it and I’ll watch it tomorrow. It sounded too scary to watch before bed.

So how was it?

This shit is fucking incredible. Oppressive, haunting atmosphere. Excellent storytelling and acting. The show runners put you right in the thick of it. A lot of users have said how devastating it is to watch, and I can understand that, but I just found it so fascinating. It feels like the types of films that came out in the 70s. Not sensationalistic disaster films per se, but more in the way it's paced and presented. The music's also great.

HBO partnered with NPR on a podcast for the show with the writer. I'm listening to it now and it's good.

Chernobyl is what really brought the Soviet Union down.

Going to watch it tonight! Was Adam Nagaitis in the first episode much?

R16, tell us more about your mom’s experience.

Please?

[quote]Was Adam Nagaitis in the first episode much?

Yeah, he was definitely one of the more featured roles. He's one of the first characters that we see. He's a handsome dude. I've never seen him in anything before. He plays the main firefighter, or rather the firefighter whose perspective we follow.

I really like Stellan Skarsgard and Emily Watson.

I don’t think I can watch it. My partner was a teenager living in Belarus at that time. He was in the initial fallout path after the explosion and was exposed to radiation. How much radiation exposure is anyone’s guess.

I started watching it. I wonder if the emergency fire calls near the beginning were real. OMG they are. I went to watch it on YouTube. There's a whole lot of the emergency calls and evacuation orders. They really did call everyone comrades.

The first part of Adam Nagaitis we see is his ass. Nice!

Here’s a link to a photo journal about the real Chernobyl. It describes the whole event chronologically. Lots of very clear pictures.

There’s a couple of pictures towards the middle of the link that show the injuries. Scroll past quick if you don’t want to see.

Holy fuck, that was terrifying.

The cast looks great, I haven't watched this yet. Sounds worthwhile.

R32 - that was amazing. Thank you.

I highly recommend everyone watch it!

Chernobyl. Chernobyl. Why? Why? Why?

Death and destruction. Why? Why? Why?

Chernobyl. Chernobyl. Why? Why? Why?

Why is there always one asshole in every disaster movie who thinks he knows it all?

I like Emily, but who asked for this?

Disaster movies don't need to be this dull.

And it's probably true that stupid people kill the most.

And no pic, r31? For shame!

i am so glad they made this. the younger generations need to understand how fucking dangerous nuclear power is. there is great documentary on youtube about it. Some of the most memorable things was the film taking by the first reporter from a helicoppter was blurred from exposure to the radiation. he eventually died of cancer. They tried to use mechanical remote controlled machines to clear the most radioactive elements from a roof, but the radiation fried there electrical components a they all malfunctioned. thats when they called in the military. soilders were sent out one by one for two rounds of 45 seconds to shovel the debris off the roof. it was a terminal exposure.

R40 - it is kind of dull, but that sort of adds to the atmosphere and experience. I think of it as more desolation than dullness. It was a sad, horrific accident affecting thousands of unsuspecting and uneducated people. It's depressing to watch, but can you imagine living it?

Fascinating, R32. Thanks.

I didn't find it dull at all as my jaw was hanging open in disbelief through most of it. And that "one asshole that's in every disaster movie" was a real person and this disaster actually happened. I was horrified for Sitnikov, the deputy chief that got sent to the roof to stare into the core and then had to come down and get yelled at by his superior officers knowing he was already dead.

I would have refused. I'd rather be shot than die from radiation poisoning. Looking into that core was like looking into the burning mouth of hell.

Isn't Fukushima, much much worse?

R47, no.

Watched the first episode. Absolutely chilling, gripping, and so well-made.

R47, Fukushima was a lot worse than what’s been reported. The Japanese government actually passed a law saying it was illegal to report scary things about it, so the reporting inside Japan promotes the idea it’s all fine.

The worst type of radiation for the short term is gamma rays, because they go right through buildings and into your home. Fukushima had some gamma rays, but a lot of cesium and other types of radiation that mostly can be kept outside by sealing your house up. Long term, it’s still bad, but if you get away pretty quickly and you’re not actually in the plant, it’s not as bad. They had an issue with a certain type of fungus that grows from radiation being found in gutters, which is where a lot of radioactive dust ends up. They discovered the radioactive dust pooled in certain areas. People’s shoes and ankles were getting contaminated from standing in gutters and low areas. A lot of it blew up and fell on trees, then it blew around as dust. And food is being grown on earth contaminated by dust that was carried by the wind, miles away.

High cesium exposure can cause sudden heart failure and aggressive behavior.

Chernobyl is worse because it was horribly managed. They made it worse. Fukushima was too, but we knew more then thanks to Chernobyl. That new shell covering Chernobyl can be easily degraded by radiation, it breaks down concrete. The one underneath was way overdue being replaced. It’s still very hot.

Different radioactive isotopes have different half lifes. Some can last for days, others for hundreds of thousands of years. No building will last that long. What happens is the hot material is like lava, it burns through the floor, burns through the earth, and will eventually burn into an underground water stream. Maybe ending up in the ocean. It’s very difficult to do anything about that, it’s so hot robots don’t even work.

Different types of radiation are caused by the temperature and circumstances of the accident. Scientists can know, for example, just from the presence of certain isotopes exactly what happened. Every accident is unique as far as what isotopes are present. They can be identified even on the other side of the earth, if the accident is ongoing, as far as which accident they came from.

There was a video online for a long time filmed inside Fukushima that showed white streaks, like rain or snow, on the film. That’s gamma rays. When you see video from those places and the film is snowy , staticky or burnt looking at the bottom, it’s gamma rays. Those are the same rays they use when you get an X-ray, they go right through you. It’s like a very powerful, out of control X-ray machine spraying rays in every direction like a fire hose with no one controlling it. They usually take that film by robot, nobody could live through that.

This is a video of a scientific test exposing a plant to gamma rays. It looks like snow or static on the film. There’s some propaganda about astronauts on this too. Just go past that. The original Fukushima footage looks like it’s been mostly deleted on YouTube.

People have an out of sight, out of mind attitude about this.

Here’s a better video. You mostly have to go outside the U.S. to find video that isn’t scrubbed.

The static on the film is the radiation.

This looks really interesting. It’s rare footage of the events of Chernobyl as they happened.

There’s footage of the local population being told buses would pick them up to evacuate at their houses. Shut off the gas and water, and bring important documents, but it’s just temporary.

There’s also footage of the helicopter crash over the reactor. It looks like the metal of the tail suddenly just melted and bent, and stuff just falls off the helicopter in midair and it falls.

If the Apollo program were real, NASA could have provided space suits for the emergency workers at Chernobyl.

The Van Allen radiation belts are far more radioactive than Chernobyl or Fukushima. If space suits really existed that could protect humans from the Van Allen belts, then such technology would have been used in a situation here on earth when the health of the entire planet was/is at stake.

Great show. Perfect depiction of the unsurpassed Soviet ineptitude and stupidity.

To think that today, after Chernobyl and Fukushima, there are fucking idiots who still advocate for nuclear energy is mindblowing.

Only just watched the first part. It obviously takes a lot of cues from the BBC movie 'Threads' (1984) also about a nuclear disaster. The bleak, oppressive photography and almost mind-numbingly depressive vibe.

It's nice to see Emily Watson and Stellan Skarsgard sharing a project again after 'Breaking The Waves', where she gave arguably one of the greatest performances ever committed to film.

Threads was on YouTube the last I saw. It’s very well known to BBC audiences.

When I was looking for radiation footage for the posts above, I noticed almost everything is scrubbed off YouTube and google. I only found something because I left google and went to a smaller search engine. Even they didn’t have much.

R54, I think the reason people advocate for this stuff is that everything gets scrubbed ASAP, and if you’re not following each new event as it happens, it’s soon gone and there’s nothing to see.

Right after Fukushima, I did a lot of research about it online. Even as the event unfolded, day by day, sites went down. Some of the first sites that blacked out were international weather sites, even in Europe, that monitor radiation dispersing into the atmosphere. Somebody on one of those sites, a scientist? Directed people on some popular general site to look at the dispersion simulation videos there. Within a day or two of those sites getting a lot of hits, they blocked access to the public although they were government funded weather service sites. Then, there was a backdoor password given out to employees. A concerned employee leaked that too, on a site for people that were following Fukushima events. Within days, that one was blocked too. They’ve never gone up again as far as I know.

If you can’t find anything out, how can you know? The exact reason Fox viewers think Trump is wonderful. Just suppress everything that says otherwise.

These threads always bring out the whackjobs like R53.

R56 (R50) is another flavor of loon. For example, I just went to YouTube and entered "fukushima robot video" and immediately found all of the footage he claims was "scrubbed." There's also a ton of other newer video from better robots.

The most dreadful sequence for me was the poor guy forced to go on the roof to survey the damage with the soldier marching behind him with a rifle. Poor guy knew he was dead one way or the other. The actor was terrific at conveying the personal internalized terror of that moment. It was a hard watch but so well done. It's amazing that so many of the people there survived at all.

Yeah, less loons please and thank you!

Radiation comparison chart from R32's link.

Check it out, R47.

don't say "scrubbed" on Datalounge.

Fewer, not less, R60.

R49 I so agree. I’m astounded by the storytelling and editing here. So well done.

New episode tonight!

I love Jared Harris, love his voice.

Adam won't stay handsome for long. 😢

I’m so excited for tonight. I haven’t been this into something on tv in a long time.

R32’s link is broken, what happened?

What a great drag queen name! Cher Noble!

You’re welcome...

Good show so far.

This was one fucked up situation, eh?

They were expecting a reading of 3.6 roentgens and got 15,000, holy shit. That's insane.

These poor irradiated firefighters are going to start melting from the inside out soon.

Wish more people would discuss this show than Game of Thrones.

Ehh, Game of Thrones is a blockbuster that's been going on for years. Chernobyl attracts a more interesting viewership with better discussion though.

Emily Watson is so great in this. When she strutted into that room with the map and her counterpoints to the “fix” I was like YES GIRL YOU TELL THEM

The last two minutes of ep 2 was like, 100x scarier than any horror film I’ve seen recently. Those poor men.

Did they get the sluice valve or whatever open before their lights went out?

Was the plan to have them come out after they opened it, or was it always a one-way trip?

Very grave of them to volunteer.

*brave

well grave fits too.

Just finished the episode. So good. I enjoyed Stellan's character's arc throughout. I assumed he'd play a more antagonistic role, but as he slowly realized the gravity of the situation he came around. Hearing he'd have five years left to live definitely helped put things in perspective.

The self sacrifice in display this episode was admirable and heartbreaking, not solely with those three men that went into the water at the end, but that military leader who drove into the facility to get better dosimeter readings. I appreciate the way these nationalist ideologies are explored throughout specific characters.

And yes, Emily Watson was great! She's always great. I loved the scene where she gave the secretary those iodine tablets. And the writer does a good job explaining and pacing out the scientific information.

Fantastic show. My jaw was dropped as well, and I was also impressed by Stellan’s realization that he should do exactly what the experts were saying and stop dick swinging. Frightening beyond belief.

Read a touching article about seniors volunteering to work at the Fukushima cleanup because their cells didn’t regenerate as quickly as a young person’s would and the radiation wouldn’t harm them as much. Shout out to Japanese olds.

Terrifying, suspenseful show! Wonderfully done, very immediate, and one of those shows that feels like you're looking at a bunch of real people, not actors.

I was a teenager when it happened and while I was scared I didn't know how scared I really should have been, and I'm forever grateful to anyone who worked to contain the reactor and keep hundreds of millions of humans from dying. And it's a goddamn shame that the world didn't learn more from the horrific happenings in Pripyat, because there are still nuclear power plants out there and Fukushima dusted my home state with radioactive cesium a few years ago. I know several people who've gotten thyroid cancer since then, BTW. I'm so fucking opposed to nuclear power.

Are you in Oregon?

R69 - Nothing happened to the link. The link never existed . Nothing ever happened in Chernobyl. Pripyat is a happy fun-time place to this day.

What I find amazing is the creator/executive producer/writer of this also wrote:

Scary Movie 3

Scary Movie 4

Superhero Movie

The Hangover II

The Hangover III

Identity Thief

That final scene of the 3 guys in the basement is giving me agita, and my skin is all itchy.

R84 - plus he was Ted Cruz's freshman roommate at Princeton.

hell no I aint watchin Emily 'little poor me look at my fug face' waton….pass

what a shitty world where big biz chooses a form of energy that can kill us all from radiation if the dam thing breaks down.

in turn of century the first cars ran on water...

wtf???

R84 his filmography is pretty funny. When I saw that he was the guy who wrote Identity Thief, I thought this was going to be melodramatic and jokey, but it is great so far. I wish they’d all dropped at the same time. This is the perfect show to binge.

R84, R86 Chernobyl is so sophisticated that this writer must have been hacking the system early on in his career. Easily profitable writing gigs that were clearly below his level of talent.

r89 I wish they dropped at the same time as well. Thankfully it's only 5 episodes, so we're almost halfway done, but I want to see the rest of the season now!

R87 - Madonna, still smarting

I'd forgotten about the possibility of a secondary steam explosion. The idea of an irradiated Ukraine and Poland is chilling. It wouldn't just be the deaths of the millions in the are of the blast, but millions more in Russia and Europe would have starved since that area is the breadbasket of Europe.

Maybe they’d all turn into Spider-Man r92?

If you really want to get scared, search on YouTube for Chernobyl birth defects. I did that a few years ago and I couldn’t believe some of the stuff I saw. Radiation destroys people’s DNA. I remember seeing a kid that had organs on the outside, and similar things. Horrible defects.

R90 I was thinking that as well. It’s hard to imagine this was written by the same guy. The writing is really fantastic. I wonder if people wish there was an IMDB scrubber to remove embarrassing stuff, cause seeing those titles after ep 2 I was like, damn I probably would’ve never given him a chance just seeing those titles alone.

I’ve seen pictures of all the malformed stray animals that have been born in Chernobyl r94, but I don’t think I could handle looking at kids. Too much.

Emily Watson would put even an insomniac to sleep......

Emily Watson's electric on the show. No clue what the haters are on about.

I am on pins and needles watching this, this is more of a thriller than any horror film.

Poor Lane Price goes out hanging himself again...

I love that there's been no moralizing speeches, the exposition of the technical concepts has been minimal and natural. The author is letting the picture tell the story. which is rare. Screenwriters usually love to preach through their characters.

The show is intense and disturbing. All of those nurses trying to help the patients are getting a death sentence, handling the firefighters discarded gear, touching that contaminated material and unknowingly spreading it to other patients. Sad sad sad.

I hate to switch this from the gut punch of the whole situation with a selfish fact, but one of the reasons I wanted to see this is because Adam Nagaitis, and he has been onscreen less than 10 minutes.

Adam is cute. He'll probably be in the next episode, but will likely be less cute.

I suppose next week we'll see them digging out tunnels under the containment by hand. The facts of this event are harrowing.

The main difference between Fukushima and this is they got right on it right away. People died to fix it. One of them was the plant manager who died of cancer or its affects within about a year. Most of those people ended up with thyroid cancer at least.

Worst case scenario at the time was thought to be a sort of hot volcano spewing radiation continuously into the air. No one could get anywhere near to do anything to shut it down if that happened. And it could conceivably go on forever.

And even so, a lot of bad things happened that were never reported on the msm in the U.S. You had to go online and read it in international newspapers and news stations. There was a reporter from Australia that stayed there a long time and did good work. He was there reporting at least a year.

You may not remember this, but Miles O’Brien from CNN went there to report a short time. He got a strange infection almost immediately and his arm had to be amputated, although he was perfectly healthy when he got there. That type of sudden infection can be a result of radiation destroying one’s immune system very suddenly. CNN hushed it up and he’s very seldom on the air there now. Richard Quest has his old job. I bet he got a settlement. I hope so.

Wiki says O'Brien lost his arm because it was crushed by an equipment case and he developed compartment syndrome. Not an infection or related to Chernobyl at all, R104.

That’s not exactly what they were saying then. And he was at Fukushima, not Chernobyl, sorry I didn’t make that clear.

I should say, a lot of people were having various symptoms of radiation exposure at the time. O’Brien went to report on site, they had journalists take buses up there. One symptom of cesium exposure, for example, is suddenly dropping dead of a heart attack. This was reported as, “X suddenly had a heart attack, it’s completely unrelated.” But it isn’t, it’s a well known symptom. Another is bleeding and blood being unable to clot. Which can make a minor injury very serious. A lot of people at the time were having sudden nosebleeds, it was related to a particular event that happened one day, an explosion or something similar. Then the wind shifted and different people were exposed.

What the Japanese newspapers reported and what foreign press and bloggers on site reported is very different.

There was a case in the newspaper about Fukushima at the time, they were having older volunteers go in and clean for a limited time. Then they would max out their exposure and have to quit.

One man worked there two or three days and suddenly had a heart attack and died. They tried to pass it off as, that’s just a coincidence. But they checked the heart of every worker brought in because of the cesium exposure, before they let them come in. That man’s heart was fine. Three days later he was dead.

There were a lot of stories like that, cancers that were passed off as coincidences, other symptoms passed off as coincidences. One TV host started eating food on his show every week to prove it was safe, that was part of a government program promoting eating Fukushima food. Such people were called heroes. . . He got cancer and died within a year or so.

They had a beauty contest of young women who had to promise to eat Fukushima food as well.

This is the story of the plant manager that died at Fukushima. He may have literally saved the world by flooding the plant with seawater, against the company’s instructions, destroying the plant and saving it from completely melting down. Sea water rusts a plant like that, rendering it unusable. They were still trying to save the plant, at the risk of the city, country, and planet.

“Although Tepco has been widely criticised for its handling of the accident, Yoshida's courage and refusal to follow orders from the firm's headquarters after the plant was struck by a 42-foot tsunami on the afternoon on 11 March 2011 have been credited with preventing a catastrophic release of radiation that could have forced the evacuation of Tokyo.“

“He will be remembered most of all for defying an order from senior Tepco officials in Tokyo to stop pumping seawater into one of the damaged reactors in a frantic effort to keep it cool. Tepco officials were concerned that pumping seawater into the reactors would render them commercially useless.” Yoshida stayed at the site as long as he could, unwilling to abandon his employee there. And he paid the price.

This story leaves out that not long after the accident, he was seen at a press conference with a neck tumor. People knew then he would die. He denied it for as long as he could, then took a leave of absence. He died not long after.

This story is exactly why nuclear power is so dangerous. There’s always some corporate executive asshole who doesn’t want to face reality. Yoshida had to go against the corporation’s wishes. In Japan that is unheard of. No one ever defies their employer publicly like that.

"This story is exactly why nuclear power is so dangerous. There’s always some corporate executive asshole who doesn’t want to face reality."

Or in the case of Chernobyl, there's always some government executive who doesn't want to face reality. On the show it looks like the officials in charge took an excruciatingly long time to respond, which is probably fairly close to the truth, but they'd still respond faster than corporate officials who are trying to save the bottom line.

No, all the nuclear power plants should be shut down, they're just too fucking dangerous. People should stop niggling about the minimal environmental impacts of solar plants, wind farms, even hydroelectric dams, and remember that fossil fuels and nuclear power can kill billions if done wrong.

Emily has the appeal of a slug on ennui....

The Japanese discriminated against victims of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and even people from those two towns, for decades. People from Fukushima have also been shunned. It is truly disgusting.

A lot of the problems related to Fukushima are related to the culture itself, not the accident.

For example, encouraging residents to eat radioactive food “to support the farmers because we must all bear the burden together.” Japanese groupthink probably killed a lot of people that were never anywhere near the plant, or it’s going to.

Russia is the same. Their culture at the time of “you can’t criticize the government or admit to fuckups no matter what” made it 1000x worse. But nobody’s ever going to run a nuclear plant on a purely scientific basis, doing only what’s scientifically best.

It's absolutely scary to think that a large area will still be inhabitable for many more thousand years.

I read about the events some years ago and very well remember when it happened as I was on vacation in Denmark at the time and the nuclear cloud was blowing over us.

The story of the engineer who volunteered to dive into the water tank to close off the valve did send chills to my spine. He knew he had to succeed because otherwise the contaminated water would have flooded the nearby river and also would have caused a way bigger explosion/pollution. He made it out alive and did manage to close the valve, but his skin was already falling off when they pulled him out of the water and he died just hours later.

[quote]his skin was already falling off when they pulled him out of the water and he died just hours later.

Geez. This next episode's gonna be gruesome.

What Emmys do we see for the show? I'm thinking Harris, Watson, and Skarsgard are getting acting noms. Best Miniseries, directing and writing for sure, and a bunch of techs like cinematography, art direction, visual effects, and makeup. Do miniseries get score nominations? Because it definitely deserves it. The music is one of my favorite aspects of the show.

Nearly everything HBO produces is simply excellent. This is no exception.

People in some areas in Scandinavia still to this day don't eat wild boar because of the high contamination of certain plants the boars eat.

There is a huge wild forest that has grown around the reactor. Leaves, stems, bark and branches have stored nuclear particles in them for decades. Scientists have been warning for years that a forest fire again could decontaminate large areas beyond the controlled zones around Chernobyl.

I recant my earlier review. This mini-series is amazing; I'm so shaken to the core and electrified. Emily Watson is just magnificent.

Another consideration is that strontium 90, another type of nuclear isotope, replaces calcium in the body. That is, if you have a fetus, baby or child that’s exposed, as its bones and teeth grow, part of the “bone” is actually made up of strontium. That can never be removed, it’s just part of the bones. The half life of strontium can vary, one figure used is 28.8 years, up to 49 years. As the strontium decays, empty places are left behind, leaving the bones porous and prone to breakage.

“Strontium-90 is a "bone seeker" that exhibits biochemical behavior similar to calcium, the next lighter group 2 element. After entering the organism, most often by ingestion with contaminated food or water, about 70–80% of the dose gets excreted. Virtually all remaining strontium-90 is deposited in bones and bone marrow, with the remaining 1% remaining in blood and soft tissues. Its presence in bones can cause bone cancer, cancer of nearby tissues, and leukemia. Exposure to 90Sr can be tested by a bioassay, most commonly by urinalysis.”

So if you’re eating a boar for example, part of its skeleton is strontium. You’re eating radioactive isotopes. And consuming any type of isotope is much worse than getting it on your skin. You only excrete part of it. Eating it day after day builds up.

Hopefully this shines some light on the risk of nuclear energy, a risk that is with us for thousands of years since nobody has figured out so far how to safely store its waste products. The cost of digging it underground is in the hundred's of billions.

Many of you have probably already seen this, but

For decades now, I've heard that all the pregnant Russian women who were exposed to high levels of radiation were forced by the state to get abortions.

Does anyone know if that's true? Because obviously if it was, they didn't get all the deformed fetuses.

if Emily snoresville Watson gets a nom ima gonna jump off the skylounge roof.

Oh, God, if so please let her get a nod!

Holy shit r118. That is gruesome.

R113, agree that next week will be frightening and foul. I almost wet myself at (SPOILER) the scene where Jared Harris points out the ionized plume and next week is only going to be worse.

^^^ sorry meant r114

Here’s a story about a woman who was there. She says there were forced abortions.

Emmy people and Golden Globers take note: please nominate Emily Watson for your awards next year. Please please.

R119 Glad we don't have that shit here in Norway. We get most (if not all) of our electricity from hydropower. It's safe and renewable energy.

A companion film to this mini-series, also produced by HBO.

Pu-239 (2006)

A worker at a Russian nuclear facility gets exposed to a lethal dose of radiation. In order to provide for his family, he steals some plutonium and sets out to sell it on Moscow's black market with the help of an incompetent criminal.

The firefighter played by Adam Nagaitis was a real person. His wife was pregnant at the time.

Let’s generate energy using literally the most toxic substances in the known universe. What could possibly go wrong?

R129 Thanks for recommending I haven't seen it but I have the soundtrack.

For Facebook and IG shits, just let us die for our selfie glory!!!

Holiday in Chernobyl: Tourism in the Exclusion Zone

Q: Do you think it's dangerous for us to go into here?

A: It depends. *giggle* Is it dangerous to smoke? Is it dangerous to drive a car? It's a very relative question, I just can't answer it!

LOL

Buckle up ladies -- Episode 3 starts now.

This series is amazing. And I hope Emily gets an emmy nod so the poster who keeps criticizing her can off herself!

HOLY FUCKING SHIT AT 39 MINUTES IN!!!!!

HOLY FUCKING SHIT!!

Holy shit!

Jinx, R136

I'm just starting episode three. Can't wait until 39 minutes in now!

Man, that was a rough episode to get through. Just fucking horrifying. The cement on the firefighters' lead coffins was so heartbreaking.

best TV show in years

Ah, vasily doesn't look so good

R141 I so agree

So those guys pushing the AZ-5 button is what caused the core to explode? Why, faulty wiring? Some sort of leak?

What did the AZ-5 button do, I forgot?

HBO finally shows us peen and it's nothing we want to see.

Stellan is wearing prosthetics, right?

All right, what does “holy shit” refer to? I’m afraid to look.

A photo of the real Vasily Ignatenko is shown doing the burial scene.

This makes me even more afraid of Russian tbh.

R147 the melting people dying of radiation poisoning

The imagery of the cement slowly filling in around and covering those shiny metal caskets... wow.

That was easily the best episode of the series thus far. The imagery of those men melting from radiation poisoning was overwhelming. I was shocked by how fast they were deteriorating. The decision to not show the man's missing face was a smart bit of direction.

The coal miners were definitely a highlight of the episode. I loved how sharp the chief was. He understood the nature of the situation and didn't take any bullshit. The scene when they're all digging naked was really powerful... that's the type of shit I love seeing, not the nudity, but the honest and visceral depiction of what these men were going through.

The entire cast continues to do a great job. Special shout out to Jared Harris's depiction of Legasov's psychological turmoil and Jessie Buckley's naive, yet adamant display of love.

People who knew each other's names never called each other "comrade". It's like addressing somebody you know as "hey, mister". Also, that's not how the Russians drink vodka and not how they give bribes. Also, everybody works Saturdays.

Just saying.

Wait, so this isn't a documentary? Did they not all speak in English?

Those aren't artistic liberties, R154. Just lazy research.

Understood. The show works on so many levels that I can't even imagine getting hung up on those, but thanks for bringing them to our attention.

I am curious though, how do Russians drink vodka and give bribes? How should those scenes have played out?

I hope to God the firefighter's wife who spent all that time at her husband's bedside getting irradiated got an abortion.

What about the nurses who tended those poor firemen? Did they all get cancer from spending too much time around a source of radiation?

R156, you better believe that if you were watching a Russian-made show about an American disaster, you'd be getting hung up on such details too.

R157, I can't tell you how the scenes should have played out; that's the screenwriter's and the director's job. But if we're talking facts, the Russians never drink vodka without a snack chaser - preferably something pungent, like a pickle or a bit of onion, but even a crust of rye bread will do in an emergency (in Russian comedies, men sniff their armpits after downing a shot). Not that there would be any such emergencies in a bar setting, where the chasers would be served with the vodka. As for the bribes, you never give them so openly: it's rude and risky. There are token gestures involved. For instance, if a cop stops you for speeding, you fold the banknote into your driver's license. In the context of the show, the only way a fireman's wife from the provinces would be able to bribe her way into a top-secret Moscow hospital is if she'd borrowed large sums of money before making the trip. If all she had to rely on were the contents of her wallet, her best bet would be to get a box of chocolates or a bottle of liquor and try her luck with those.

R159 Thanks for the info!

Lyudmilla actually did bribe her way into the hospital. She was six months pregnant and did give birth to a baby girl who died. The baby absorbed most of the radiation her mother was exposed to.

You're welcome, R159. It's nice that you were curious.

Good for Lyudmilla. Being Russian, she knew how it's done.

That was for R160.

R156 - Agree. The minute details didn't try to alter the course of history, nor that they got in the way of the storytelling. That's all I care. All the thrill and drama for me would have been gone if I nitpick obsessively on every detail of every thing I watch like that. Too anal retentive.

Ep. 3 - Great episode all around: the sadness, the doom and gloom and the urgency are so palpable.

I'm developing a serious crush on Jared Harris.

I applaud this show, so well done, except for the shocking casting of the alwys downer Debbie actress: miss E Watson.

R166 - and sorry Samatha Morton. The director didn't cast you in this amazing role. Now take your med and shut up.

R158

The previews for next week show her visibly pregnant ....

This series is one of the most terrifying horror movies I’ve ever seen. It’s just misery and tension from start to finish.

Chernobyl has become a thriving wildlife preserve, at great cost of course.

Interesting, r170. I wonder how is that possible?

R171, life is amazingly resilient, and more tolerant of long-term exposure to radiation than a lot of people thought. Learning these things is the one silver lining to this dark radioactive cloud.

The long term containment of the reactor core has been successful. You can even visit Pripyat for a holiday these days. Some readings taken from the exclusion zone are even lower than those outside.

Peen!

[quote]what a shitty world where big biz chooses a form of energy that can kill us all from radiation if the dam thing breaks down.

As opposed to gradually destroying the climate?

R104 Wikipedia has a different story;

[quote]In February, 2014, O'Brien was injured when a Pelican case filled with television equipment fell on his left forearm, causing acute compartment syndrome and resulting in the amputation of his left arm above the elbow.

Cover-up?

Remember when we were all excited to see the hot firefighter's bum in the pilot? Gone are the days...

RIP firefighter’s bum. We hardly knew ye.

The posterior for posterity.

Came here hoping there would be a thread on this show. Well done.

Having watched innumerable beheadings torture, etc, on the web, and thinking I was pretty inured to it all., I was pretty much unable to even look at those poor men as they melted away. It was as horrifying a thing as I have ever seen. I was watching through my hands. This series in incredible.

Whoever started this thread, thank you.

Firefighter uniforms in the hospital basement in Pripyat. 30 years later and they're still "hot".

I can't believe we used to worry so much about nuclear power just so Global Warming could wipe us out a few decades later.

[quote]What did the AZ-5 button do, I forgot?

It's their Scram button - it's initiated an emergency shutdown of the reactor. Basically, it's suposed to re-insert all of the control rods into the core to absorb neutrons to stop the fission reaction. Even if everything else goes wrong, it's supposed to be failsafe. Something went wrong, and they'll tell us what soon enough.

R182 Worry not; sudden cardiac arrest will get you first.

I guess Chernobyl and perestroika really brought about the end of the USSR then.

R55 It's nice to see Emily Watson and Stellan Skarsgard sharing a project again after 'Breaking The Waves', where she gave arguably one of the greatest performances ever committed to film.

Greatest performance ever

I'm still bitter that Frances McDormand won the Oscar instead of Emily.

R159 they’re staying in an abandoned hotel following a nuclear disaster. Who is gonna be providing them their little pickle vodka chasers?

Hot asses and Big fat daddy cock made the third episode more interesting!!

I watch this show with a knot in my stomach every week. Brilliant.

And I want to thank it for reminding me of how much I love Stellan S.

Next season: Three-Mile Island.

R190 = R. Murphy

For those who are as entranced by the score as I am.

Agreed that the full frontal burly coal miners gave this week’s installment some much needed zing. The first couple episodes could really have benefitted from some graphic Silkwood scrubs of a few of the firefighters and nomenklatura.

[quote]I'm developing a serious crush on Jared Harris.

I've had a soft spot for him since Mad Men. Then he played the boat captain in The Curious Case of Benjamin Buttons which was such a different part for him. Terrific actor and yes I too have a crush.

R186 Me too and her second Oscar for the performance she had given before in many films Sally Hawkins was robbed.

This show is great. Agree it's super tense and riveting.

If any of my fellow Jared Harris fans in here haven't yet watched The Terror, I urge you to do so! You may want to recover a bit from Chernobyl first because The Terror is equally grim, tense, and heartbreaking.

I'm into grim, tense, and heartbreaking and have seen The Terror recommended ever since Chernobyl started airing. I'll definitely check it out. I've been watching Jared Harris interviews recently and he's just so charming! I'll post a few of them below:

The interviewer's a bit of a prat in this one, but it's got more cast members and Harris makes Jessie Buckley crack up for a second, which is refreshing to see considering how grim the show is.

And here's one with SAG:

Am watching R200's video right now. Cracked up at 7:18, "I told Stellan that he was the Alpha Male."

Hot daddy bulge in both videos From Jared, awesome!

Fascinating to learn that they shot on a plant in Lithuania built at the same time and on the same exact plan as the Chernobyl plant. I've been watching the show mind-boggled at how it seemed so accurate!

I wanted to yell at the pregnant woman and tell her not to touch her husband. I don't know what happens to her in real life but I can't imagine she gave birth to a healthy baby.

R204 she survived because the baby absorbed all the radiation , the baby died six days after birth.

[quote] Glad we don't have that shit here in Norway. We get most (if not all) of our electricity from hydropower. It's safe and renewable energy.

Piss off with your smugness, R128. “Part of the reason that so much of Norway's electricity can be generated from hydropower is due to the natural advantage of its TOPOGRAPHY, with abundant steep VALLEYS and rivers.”

So basically Norway just got randomly lucky with topography & resources. It’s like sitting in (advantageously always sunny) Arizona and moralising: “Oh, why doesn’t all the world just use solar panels like me in my sunny AZ cactus home”. Because there are (very cloudy, rainy) places in the world that DON’T have reliable sun energy. And there are places that have mostly FLAT topography (e.g. Kansas, most of Ukraine including Chernobyl, etc): few valleys, mostly steppes or flat forests. The rivers in Ukraine don’t tumble down rapidly from high elevated points (mountains, peaks) like in Norway. So they don’t have the RANDOM natural advantage that you’re boasting about. They can’t rely on hydropower to support electricity production for their entire country.

Ukraine also doesn’t have much natural gas. And the war in East Ukraine means it doesn’t have consistent access to coal even. Ukraine is not a particularly windy region either (it’s not like Texas, it doesn’t get big winds or storms), so can’t rely solely on wind energy either.

This is one of the reasons why Ukraine (including Chernobyl, which is located in present-day Ukraine) STILL relies significantly on nuclear power EVEN TODAY - to make up for the shortfall in other natural resources. Because (topographically) they have few other alternatives. And, as a cold-climate country, if they don’t generate enough electricity to warm people’s homes during their very cold winters, they’ll have fatalities during the winter period (just like they did during the previous “electricity blackouts”).

[quote] “Ukraine was 8th top nuclear electricity producer in 2009. 46.7% of domestic electricity generation was nuclear. This was the 2nd largest share, only France was higher. The largest nuclear power plant in Europe is in Ukraine.”

So basically they’re damned if they do, and damned if they don’t. If Ukraine cuts back on nuclear power - they’ll face the risk of an electricity shortfall / blackout and people dropping dead in the winter. If they don’t cut back on nuclear power - they’ll always face the risk of a repeat Chernobyl / Fukushima accident:

[quote] “Lack of coal for Ukraine's coal-fired power stations due to the War in Donbass and a shut down of one of the 6 reactors of the Zaporizhia Nuclear Power Plant lead to rolling blackouts throughout Ukraine from early till late December 2014.”

It doesn’t help matters that Ukraine is not a rich country, so they can’t really invest into expensive alternatives scientific research either. I heard the Chinese are investing in the region and selling their eco-product models to Ukraine. But I’m not sure “eco-models” from China will be reliable quality either:

[quote] “In 2017 Climate News Network reported that Chinese companies plan to spend $1bn in a solar power park in the nuclear disaster area in Ukraine.”

I got a kick out of the lead miner

Ukraine has already has issues when Russia switched off the pipeline and it practically shutdown the country.

There’s been a long-standing catfight between the two over that. Ukrainian bureaucrats were siphoning gas from the state supply pipelines and refusing to pay for the gas, under the guidance of Yuliya Timoshenko (nicknamed the “Ukrainian gas princess” because she is rumoured to have made a mint off the siphoned gas).

The two countries argued over those outstanding invoice debts and the new price tariffs for the gas supply contract for months. The negotiations failed as they couldn’t come to any agreement about the new price tariff or debt repayment so the suppliers switched off the supply.

And, off-topic, but that price dispute affected others as well. Hungary, Romania and Poland get some of their gas from the pipeline that transits via Ukraine. But the pressure in the pipeline from Ukraine to Romania etc became very weak (falling up to 40% in some months), which made people suspect that some Ukrainian officials were siphoning gas (more than they were supposed to under their contract) - and not allowing enough gas to transit further. At one point, Ukraine’s unpaid gas debt invoices accumulated to $2 billion.

[quote] Good for Lyudmilla. Being Russian, she knew how it's done.

AFAIK, Lyudmila Ignatenko wasn’t Russian, she was Ukrainian or Belarusian. Just like most people living near or working at the Chernobyl plant (located in the S. Union Republic of Ukraine, as it was then known). More precisely, it was northern Ukraine, on the border with Belarus and not too far from Kiev. Her husband, the firefighter and first responder, Vasily Ignatenko came from Belarus, but was also of Ukrainian descent (the surname gives it away - Ignaten-KO). There’s a memorial monument in his honour in the Belarus town of Brahin.

In fact, many, if not most, of the mid-tier characters (firefighters, police officers, hospital workers, local bureaucrats, local plant workers & middle managers, some of the investigators, etc) are clearly Ukrainian. E.g. Ulana Khomy-UK (Watson’s character).

It’s basically like watching a show about a disaster in Northern Ireland and assuming everyone there is “English”. Ukrainians and Belarusians were part of the Union, but not Russian (just like the Northern Irish are part of the Union / British, but not English).

The actress portraying Lyudmila is Jessie Buckley, btw. I saw her on stage doing Sondheim, she’s lovely.

One for the Brits perhaps, but the coal miners' leader might have been recognisable as the awful Trev from EastEnders, famous for terrorising Little Mo.

The lead miner is Alex Ferns. He was also naked in Low Winter Sun (2006).

Boy that link did not work.

R213, also in the cast from EE is Amanda Drew (Mad Dr. May) as a Kremlin aide, Alison Pargeter (Sarah, Martin’s stalker) as the receptionist who got slipped the iodine pills and, in the next episode, Sam Strike (Johnny #1).

I'm excited to see cutie Barry Keoghan as one of the liquidators in the next episode! He was briefly shown at the end of the last episode.

Chernobyl is the highest-rated show ever on IMDb.

IMDB has no credibility any more.

There's a lot of recency bias when it comes to IMDb ratings. My only issue with this is that anything that's number one will have backlash. I expect the rating to go down. Regardless, the show's quality stands on its own without IMDb's ranking system.

Also, new episode tonight!

Jessie Buckley seems to be in everything. She is excellent as is Emma Watson.

You mean Emily Watson, R222.

I’m loving it that Alex Ferns, who plays Glukhov the chief miner, is being singled out for his fantastic performance. I hope he gets nominated for an Emmy.

Yes Jessie Buckley is everywhere. I just watched her in War & Peace, The Last Post, Beast, The Woman in White.

She was very very good in War & Peace.

She looks a lot like Sienna Miller. Good actress but, like Florence Pugh, not distinctive at all in the sort of way which makes stars.

How can it be so highly rated? The reviews are terrible.

Glad to see that something quality like this is getting raves

[quote]How can it be so highly rated? The reviews are terrible.

Where do you live that the reviews are terrible? It sits at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes with only two negative reviews out of 47.

There’s an accompanying official podcast done by HBO available called “The Chernobyl Podcast” for those interested.

Finally gave it a shot and I'm enjoying it but don't get the raves. It's competently done and informative, but a bit flat otherwise.

I was reading more about the accident today and was struck by how few had actually died as a direct result of the accident. I'd always just assumed the numbers were in the thousands, if not tens of thousands. I mean, that's very good news, of course.

The trolls who keep posting that reviews are terrible are probably paid Russian Trolls.

While there is rough agreement that a total of either 31 or 54 people died from blast trauma or acute radiation syndrome(ARS) as a direct result of the disaster,[6][7][8] there is considerable debate concerning the accurate number of deaths due to the disaster's long-term health effects, with estimates ranging from 4,000 (per the 2005 and 2006 conclusions of a joint consortium of the United Nations and the governments of Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia), to no fewer than 93,000 (per the conflicting conclusions of various scientific, health, environmental, and survivors' organizations)

I was pretty shocked to learn that the guy who opened the door with his body on the first episode (the chubby guy) actually survived.

[quote] Where do you live that the reviews are terrible? It sits at 96% on Rotten Tomatoes with only two negative reviews out of 47.

LOL, I went to the NYT and the Guardian to read their reviews-- which happen to be the only two negative reviews out there. But now that I've read them I can't get interested in watching it. Thanks a lot, NYT and the Guardian!

I am beginning to disregard the NY Times reviews. They're usually way off.

After the Guardian gave 5-star high praise to this film, I just stopped paying attention to their movie/tv reviews any longer.

Chernobyl is great and awesome and gripping. End of. Just don't watch it while you're eating.

I posted above that I wasn't going to watch it because I read reviews that said it sucked, and then another poster corrected me. So I started watching it. The acting is kind of hammy and it feels like it's filmed like any old disaster movie, but it's definitely watchable.

There's a Russian guy on Twitter who's reviewing episodes in terms of visual accuracy, and it's kind of fascinating. Apparently the visual design is working on "Mad Men" levels of detail. I'll provide a link if I can find it.

Fuck, that was a powerful opening.

Dear god this mass killing of the pets is gruesome and horrifying.

Another great episode

Humans routinely “mass kill” animals to feed their randomly privileged “pets”. So who cares.

And all animal slaughterhouses are “gruesome & terrifying”. I’ve been to rural lamb slaughterhouses - blood and dead carcasses hanging everywhere.

All the attention to detail with the production design but they allowed all the actors to use their individual accents.

Barry Keoghan (Pavel) almost sounded American. He had very little dialogue so it was hard to tell. His “boss”’was hot-I’m guessing the actor was Fares Fares who’s Middle Eastern. Both he and the wonderful actress who played the babushka in the barn, June Watson, aren’t listed in the productiom on IMDb, for some reason.

The podcast discussed the accent issue. They wanted to avoid "Boris and Natasha".

Wouldn't Russians all have regional accents anyway?

I guess they didn’t want it too look too explicit but those puppies were actually feeding off a dead dog before they were shot, right?

R243 Yeah, I call it the Pam Gems logic. When she wrote Piaf instead of the actors doing outrageous french accents they used english ones relating to their status and it just works.

5 episodes of harshly dense fake russian accents would have been hell

R246, Russians (as in, ethnic Russians) mostly don’t have regional accents. A Russian from the East Coast (near Japan) and a Russian from the Western part (near Scandinavia) speak almost exactly the same - even though they’re thousands of miles apart.

However, this plant was not in Russia proper, but on the border of the former Union republics of Ukraine and Belarus - so many local plant workers would likely have had a slight Ukrainian or Belarusian ethnic accent.

Damn this is some depressing stuff.

This kid sure got a shit job. Clearing forests or digging ditches sounds wonderful compared to shooting cats and dogs.

[quote] There's a Russian guy on Twitter who's reviewing episodes in terms of visual accuracy

I’m sure he’s adding some helpful info. But how would a Russian guy know much about the visuals of life on the border of the former S. Union Republics of Ukraine & Belarus (where the plant was located)?

While they were all part of a big Union, each Republic still had local idiosyncrasies & differences. Plus, the town of Pripyat was a VERY unique, even unusual town, unlike most others in Ukraine: it was a brand new town and specifically built in the 70s for this plant (by a biracial female architect).

Ironically, I read that the accommodation and infrastructure in Pripyat was better than in many old Ukrainian towns - because everything there was brand new and designed to be more progressive than some regular provincial town. The median age of the town’s population was comparatively young-ish as well - because many of the plant workers moved there after graduating from university.

His name’s Slava Malamud and he’s on Twitter. And he’s fantastic.

Dear God that was a hard episode to watch (episode 4).

Emily Watson visits the Deputy Secretary who doesn't care shit about Chernobyl and was in charge of shoe factory the year before. Sounds like one of Trump's appointees.

Why is it hard to watch? I don't want to watch it if it's upsetting.

R252, Malamud sounds like a Jewish surname. It’s Hebrew and translates as “teacher”.

Spoilers for episode four

R255 three of the soldiers had to kill all of the animals that were affected- mostly dogs. We see a bunch of friendly dogs that have to be put down. Thankfully there isn't anything too graphic, but it's upsetting.

We do see a truck with their dead bodies dumping them in a pit and covered in cement.

The scary thing about the whole incident is the dreariness of Pirpyat BEFORE the accident. Considering it was one of the youngest, most educated, most modern, and, relatively speaking, "free" cities in the Soviet Union. I can only imagine the drudgery of the rest of the place. Here it is before the disaster. It's hard to tell the difference. EEK.

Nuclear power is still the only viable solution to climate change.

That scene on the roof was intense as fuck. That dude who tripped is toast. Dead in a month.

R258, it was fully subsidised (almost free) housing on a limited state budget (Eastern Europe was never rich). So what do you expect? Mansions with private rooftop pools?

It was better than the mudhuts they lived in before. Outside of this new town, most rural people didn’t even have internal plumbing or indoor toilets. So the town of Pripyat was a step up - for that developing region at least.

Only one episode left 😞. As gut-wrenching as it is to watch, I don’t want it to end.

Here’s a great read about the casting directors for Chernobyl. The accent issue is actually mentioned in it, too.

[quote] “free" cities

What do you mean by “free” city? It was a nuclear development city - so it was actually probably a closed city, like those assisting a chemical plant or military base. You usually need to apply and get special approval to settle there.

Free as it was filled with highly educated, sought after workers. I guess maybe free thinking was a better term. It's just like a highly educated area anywhere. I lot less gullible and a lot more needed so they're treated a little better. It may have been closed to outsiders but that doesn't mean the insiders were treated like convicts.

I almost didn't make it through that one. I was with the mean guy - don't let them suffer, fuckhead! When he was just staring at that poor dog whining in pain, I had to go in the next room.

Those young men running around scooping up graphite for 90 seconds at a time, that was just nuts. They were practically grateful for the honor.

[quote]His name’s Slava Malamud and he’s on Twitter. And he’s fantastic.

THANK YOU. Couldn't find the name or the link.

[quote]I’m sure he’s adding some helpful info. But how would a Russian guy know much about the visuals of life on the border of the former S. Union Republics of Ukraine & Belarus (where the plant was located)?

Not entirely sure how to answer that, but since they shot in Lithuania it could be that Soviet design was quite uniform throughout the Iron Curtain?

Anyways, here's his analysis of eps. 1.

Malamud and the creator/executive producer/writer Craig Mazin tweet back and forth a lot about various details. It’s great.

Brilliant series. I cannot believe it happened in 1986. Looking at the series, it looks like Russia is still in the 1950's. I didn't realize to poverty in the name of socialism.

According to Malamud Pavel’s “boss” is supposed to be Georgian and the actor (Fares Fares) is Lebanese. Insert Rose from Golden Girls joke here.

I'm watching episode 2 where they explain how they must open the water tanks to prevent further disaster, like a megaton explosion that could kill 50 million people. I was around when Chernobyl occurred but didn't know the horrible damage it caused and/or could have caused.

I think those 3 men that went down there to turn on the water tanks deserved more than 400 roubles-- WTF? How about 400,000 roubles for saving millions.

Those 3 men who went down there actually survived. Two have since died, but the third one is still alive and was given an Awards by the Ukranian President. The other two received it posthumously. They died in the last decade, so they had an almost normal lifespan.

Actually after seeing and reading more about Chernobyl, it's not wonder there is such bad blood between Ukraine and Russia. They were treated horribly by those in Moscow.

Thanks, R272, I didn't know that. It sounded like they'd die in a week.

I think just one of them died, from heart disease in 2015. Mazin has tweeted this will be revealed in next week’s finale.

Someone made a tearsheet of when/how the people featured on the show died.

Thanks for the tearsheet #275.

Told ya that the chubby guy who opened the door with his body (and had picked up that scalded guy) survived. He probably had excellent genetic material in his blood stream.

Another exceptional episode. Each new dimension of the event they choose to explore continually enriches the show. If they don't screw up the finale, and I can't imagine they would, this will definitely be regarded as one of television's finest miniseries.

The shooting of the dogs was harrowing. I'm sure there are many viewers who wouldn't be able to stomach this episode. Can't imagine what the men on the ground actually went through emotionally/psychologically. I appreciate how unflinching the show is when it comes to depicting these more troublesome scenarios. I thought Barry Keoghan did a good job expressing how difficult the situation must have been despite his dodgy accent work at the start.

Gotta praise the prop department here. Just seeing that graphite littered across the rooftop is disconcerting. The sequence with the men (bio-robots) cleaning the roof was impeccably shot. I loved the way we followed the soldier as he labored through the process. Great sound design as well with the rising dosimeter static. Felt a bit like Saving Private Ryan in the way that it places you right in the moment. It's a beautifully shot show.

Shcherbina's blow up on the phone was great. How frustrating to see state propaganda prevent them from acquiring the proper tools to execute their mission. The revelation about what actually caused the reactor to explode was satisfying, but frustrating at the same time due to the way it implicates Legasov. It puts his suicide from the first episode in perspective. That last scene with Stellan, Jared, and Emily was so powerfully acted.

I wanted to add this shot that stuck out to me. Love the cinematography on this show.

I recall the summer after the incident water-skiing in Croatia when guys dressed in what appeared to be space suits and helmets lumbered into the sea from the beach. My uncle told me later they were Japanese scientists taking water samples to measure fallout WTF.

[quote] Actually after seeing and reading more about Chernobyl, it's not wonder there is such bad blood between Ukraine and Russia. They were treated horribly by those in Moscow.

AFAIK, the injured firefighters were transported to Moscow for treatment. If they had wanted to treat them “horribly”, they’d just leave them in some provincial hospital in Ukraine.

Many plant workers were Belarusian, not just Ukrainian. So where’s the “bad blood” between Belarus and Russia?

The main engineer responsible for the design flaw was granted amnesty after serving some of his sentence and allowed to live in Kiev until he passed away in 1995. If there had been “bad blood”, local Ukrainians would have kicked him out of the country, but they didn’t. His amnesty and the fact that he was allowed to continue living in the Ukraine suggests that he was at least partially forgiven for his mistake.

Croatia was significantly affected by radioactivity

R265, not sure what “free-thinking vs gullible” has to do with nuclear energy specialists. It was simply a prestigious state job with perks - so all the job candidates were probably very motivated people. In the city of Pripyat it was mostly young people pursuing the dream of building a better future, in a brand new city, with cleaner (nuclear) energy. But how were they supposed to know that the leading engineer of that plant made a mistake in the plant’s design.

OK R281 my point was all wrong.

R262 that’s exactly how I feel

[quote] Looking at the series, it looks like Russia is still in the 1950's. I didn't realize to poverty in the name of socialism.

IIRC, most of the series depicts the Ukraine-Belarus border area, not Russia. Just like Wales is not England. Even today, Ukraine is unfortunately more poor than Russia - because there’s a deficit of mineral resources in that area. That’s why Ukraine even now relies mainly on nuclear energy (despite the Chernobyl tragedy). The main industry is agriculture, but that’s not enough to sustain the economy.

What does “poverty in the name of socialism” mean? The vast majority of Eastern Europe has ALWAYS been historically poor, just like Africa. The main difference is that before socialism most Slavs were illiterate (couldn’t read or write) and living in a feudalism system.

Norway's radioactive reindeer

Does Rupert’s red nose now glow in the dark?

This is like a horror movie.

It's a view of the inevitable end as well.

Agree r287, and I feel that it adds extra layers of fear and sadness. The horrors are exacerbated because all of this was documented and recorded. The Scandinoir crossed with horror esthetic is a great choice. There were parts I couldn’t stomach last night and had to look away.

Not at the naked miners though. I watched that with my eyes open. I know it was a horrible moment in the story but I’m not going to look away from a manly ass.

I remember when it happened they said that the Laplanders way of life would be destroyed.

I never saw a follow up on how those people were doing...

LOL, R289. Vintage DL. And I bet at least one of those miners was an insatiable bottom.

The hyperbole over this series is quite something to behold.

This fourth episode is grim, but compulsive viewing. Humans can die, but animasl NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!

And now I kinda understand the old lady who didn't want to leave her cow.

But purely based on an economic calculation of cost and benefit, the evacuation was not worth it, says Prof Thomas. The expected compensation bill to evacuees is ¥7.9tn ($74bn). Add in the terrible health consequences of disrupting lives “and it becomes many more times not worth doing”. The lifetime risk of death from a 100 millisievert dose of radiation — more than any resident actually received — is about 0.5 per cent. (Financial Times)

I really hope HBO would continue to make more mini-series about terrifying disasters like Chernobyl in the future.

Maybe some of these.

When I was a pre-engineer looking at colleges, they took a bunch of us to UCLA and showed us their nuclear reactor

Emily Watson et Stellan Skarsgard ♥️

Stellan Skarsgård on HBO’s ‘Chernobyl’

[bold]When this came your way and you got to read the script, what was it that made you want to sign on and have a hand in telling this story?[/bold]

STELLAN SKARSGARD: First of all, it was a very well-written script, and it was not sentimentalizing the story. It was very true to the story, but also true to the people that were involved. It was not trying to put strength and sugar on everything. It’s very, very well written. But then, I also wanted to work with Emily Watson again, whom I haven’t worked with since we did Breaking the Waves, some 20 years ago. And I wanted to work with Jared Harris, who is a fantastic actor. I also knew the director, Johan Renck. We were supposed to do his first feature film together, many years ago, and it never happened, so I was looking forward to working with him, as well. There’s an enormous flow of content now, through all kinds of media channels. There are so many TV series made, and there’s so much film. Not many of the scripts I read are dealing with important subjects that concern us today, as much as this script does.

^^^ Was johan Renck’s first feature film “The Hangover”? LOL no wonder he didn’t mention it by name, just “his first feature film” LOL

Johan Renck's first feature film was Downloading Nancy. You're likely thinking of Chernobyl screenwriter Craig Mazin, who wrote the second and third Hangover films.

Well, this comment on Reddit just killed me.

[quote]One of the liquidators in the accounts they used said one of the puppies wasn't dead when they went to bury it and they were completely out of bullets and could do nothing to help it since it was literally in a pile of irradiated animals. They shot the scene but couldn't add it in as it felt like too much.

Hopefully we're done with animal slaughter now.

R301, the creator/executive producer tweeted that the “horror” stuff is now concluded and the finale will be the explanation of how it all happened.

r302 I just looked it up and it's only five episodes, wtf? Who does only five episodes of anything these days? Even Fleabag got six and PWB is notoriously stingy with her episodes.

I mean, I'm not that mad as I haven't really warmed up to this show, but still. I wonder if this is a one-off or if it'll become an anthology series, like The Terror.

R303 it's a mini-series... a self contained story. Fleabag's the second season of a tv show. They're not comparable.

Not really why I brought it up, but okay. Even limited series can be longer. See Fosse/Verdon, Sharp Objects, Catch-22...

This kind of story is a must for younger people to see, I doubt some ever heard of Chernobyl. I vaguely remember it but I didn't realize that the core was destroyed and blew the entire roof off like a bomb. I remember Three-Mile Island disaster which occurred earlier but it was nowhere as disastrous as this.

R305 I assume the writer believed he could tell the story in 5 episodes. Olive Kitterage had 4. Angels in America had 6. The best thing about mini-series is that they last for as long as they need to. Dragging something on for longer than necessary is one of my main problems with American television. It's refreshing to see a show that doesn't overstay its welcome.

I'm glad it only has five episodes; really can't stomach more horrors and heartbreaks than these episodes, no matter how superb the mini-series is.

HBO should make more series about man-made horrors to remind people that there's more to life than just Instagram, Facebook or Twitter.

Did the old lady get shot too or just the cow? I want to know what happened to the head miner.

Just the cow. I think maybe we’ll find out the fate of the head miner in the finale.

Agreed, R308. I love this series, but after this past episode I'm ready for it to be over. I'm glad that the finale looks like a court-room drama, that should be less emotionally devastating. Also agree with you that 'Chernoby;' should be shown in high schools.

I am a historian (PhD) who also teaches high school. I am curious why people think this should be shown in high school?

"I am a historian (PhD) who also teaches high school."

In other words, you are poor.

So this show is worth getting an HBO free trial for less than a week and binge-watching?

Why not, R312? It's history. Schools don't really prepare kids for dealing with the world outside.

[quote] So this show is worth getting an HBO free trial for less than a week and binge-watching?

No but you can also binge GOT and all their other shows....if you're not working.

"I am a historian (PhD) who also teaches high school. I am curious why people think this should be shown in high school? "

It's a lesson in history, physics, sociology, civics, psychology, and environmentalism all wrapped up in five neat episodes. The little bastards will learn more from this than from your lectures!

I can't believe a so-called PhD historian is asking such a stupid question.

I was trying to find some background information of the residual damage of Chernobyl and what was learned. Apparently we humans are more resilient to radiation poisoning than originally thought.

What became of the roof-clearing guys? Did they die terrible deaths?

It’s not a stupid question. It’s five hours which is probably six or seven class sessions. That’s probably as much time as the Civil War might get in a HS history class It’s also not a complete representation of nuclear power as this type of reactor is rare and this type of disaster rarer. Should sex education be taught by showing graphic images of STDs?

No, but you could recommend they see it and talk a little bit about it. Nobody said you needed to show the whole mini-series, are you that daft?

R321 - you are already poor, please don't be too lazy. Don't you know how to extract a video to get to the most important and relevant parts for your students? No wonder you are only able to teach in high schools.

And that's really moronic analogy "Should sex education be taught by showing graphic images of STDs?". Is that what you could think of sex ed?

[quote]Many plant workers were Belarusian, not just Ukrainian. So where’s the “bad blood” between Belarus and Russia?

I mean seriously. What's a mass killing of 30,000 civilians between friends?

And I'm sure Ukranians overlooked mass starvation in the 30's as well.

I like it but it’s not something I would ever rewatch.

Great article by Slava Malamud about his stepfather who was sent to Chernobyl:

I don't see how the documentary says anything profound about the broader changes occuring in the late 1980s or about the anxieties and costs of the nuclear age. I thought maybe someone here could explain what makes this documentary so special. "OMG UR stupid" is not a very compelling argument.

But'cha ARE stupid, Blanche! For starters, this is a dramatized miniseries, not a documentary. If you couldn't even figure out that much from reading the thread, I do pity your students.

R328 - "OMG UR utterly stupid!!!"

It's a historically based disaster drama!!!

[quote]"OMG UR stupid" is not a very compelling argument.

QE motherfucking D, son.

I had an Uber driver today who was from Ukraine. Turns out, she's a survivor of Chernobyl. Her parents insisted she flee when it happened and she moved to the States. Her dad was a physician and helped clean out. He did eventually die from cancer, but he lived to be 80.

Unfortunately, it was a short ride. (I can't believe I just wrote that!). She was fascinating and i wanted to hear more of what she had to say!

One of my favorite (former) hockey players grew up during the Chernobyl era. On a more lighthearted note, he'd joke that it's why he couldn't grow a playoff beard.

This series is an uncomfortable reminder that Earth is going to be a filthy radio active deforrested open sewer by the time man dumps it and migrates to another planet to do the same.

The soundtrack is out for those interested in listening to it.

Finally. Music you can slit your wrists to.

Hahaha, I'm on the last track right now. It's a heavy listen, but it sound so good through my headphones. There are a lot of really strong tracks, including a vocal one that I assume will be on the final episode as I can't remember hearing it before.

Who does the music? Is it Trent Reznor? It's really good and fitting.

Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir.

All those people standing there in the middle of the night, looking at the fire, and they would all die.

I was interested to know that the three guys they sent in to turn off the water manually, all survived. The scene in the meeting where Emily Watson and JAred HArris had to explain to Gorbachov that 50 million people would die, and that people in Scandinavia and GErmany were already being affected was mind blowing. We were "that close" to the worst existential nuclear disaster, in human history.

I am impressed with the acting of the three major actors, Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgaard and Emily Watson. Harris should get an award one of these days, he's a consistently good actor, for example in Mad Men and The Terror.

He seems to be typecast as The Doomed guy who commits suicide. He hung himself in Mad Men too.

I find Harris very interesting to watch, but I'm not going to watch something just for him. Now, Stellan is another matter. He is someone I will watch just for him.

Really enjoying Emily Watson in this.

She's a boss.

I always Enjoy Emily. She is among a handful of very interesting actorsalong with Helena Bonham Carter and Kristen Scott Thomas, who will be the next tier of classics, like Dench, Mirren, Maggie Smith.

R345, I love Emily Watson, and it's a shame she gets ignored so much. I don't know whether the rumours about Harvey blackballing her are true, but she truly deserves more and better offers.

Found this on the net. I will watch it after Chernobyl is over. Babushka would be a nice pet name to call an old Russian troll on DL. What say you, babushka?

The Babushkas of Chernobyl (2015)

An affectionate portrait of a group of women who, after the 1986 Chernobyl disaster and evacuation, returned to the exclusion zone surrounding the nuclear power plant and have resided there - semi-officially, for years.

Emily Watson was phenomenal in Breaking the Waves. Apart from that, I would say her performance in Synecdoche, New York (2008) was astonishing, albeit smallish. I was simply bowled over and couldn't stop thinking about the movie for a month! And she was great in Hilary and Jackie as well.

R348 Roger Ebert wrote an essay proclaiming Synecdoche, NY the movie of the decade. You might want to google it. I've seen it maybe 3 times now. It gets better every time.

R331 Jesus I would suck on that big daddy cock so good and then ride it hard

meant for r341

So tomorrow is the final episode. Looks like it will mostly be a court room drama with a lot of political back stabbing. Man the Russians are conditioned to be liars. It's like it's hardwired into their brains. They see something happening before their eyes and they're governed by fear and secrecy and lies.

We're DLers. We won't risk our lovely facial skin for such a folly. Not after all the money we've spent on products.

Yeah r352 it won't be pretty. I bet Boris and Valery won't be friends by the end of the final episode. Shame.

But we will get to see a bit more pre-irradiated Adam Nagaris in the ep, so that's something. He's cute.

Final episode tonight, gents! Sad to see it go, but excited to see how it ends.

NY Times science writer says this is largely a work of fiction, although it doesn’t matter in the larger scheme. I find myself somewhat disappointed at this revelation.

It's not as if they intended to make a fantastical show. If you listen to the podcast, the showrunner is upfront about the choices they made (and had to make) regarding the veracity of certain points of this event. They had to listen to competing narratives and make choices as to what to highlight. They had to condense several different true persons into one character. For instance, the character played by Emily Watson is an amalgamation of the several scientists who provided input and assisted with the disaster. If anything, their presentation is very low-key when it could have been a gore-fest in the wrong hands.

It's called dramatization. You'll be disappointed in every thing in life if you're such an anal retentive pedant.

Stop clenching your ass once in a while and just immerse yourself in the gripping and horrifying drama. We should be grateful that the mini-series has re-ignited massive interest in the 1986 catastrophic nuclear accident.

Yeah, that article nitpicked a few things that are, ultimately, irrelevant unless you believe Chernobyl to be a documentary instead of a dramatic depiction of what went down. I'm glad he brought certain things to light, because one can always go on and do their own research on some of those issues... like how blue the ionized air really looked.

I'm confused by his statement that the show depicted radiated victims covered in blood. I don't really remember that. They showed the reddening skin and the eventual deterioration of it, but I don't remember much blood at all.

R359 - probably in episode 1 when the workers went into the reactor to check the rods, one of them was bleeding through his skin. But it was about 10 seconds. So much nitpicking in the NY Times article.

Ah, right. I remember that scene.

That was a powerful ending. I'm glad they showed Vasily Legasov with the scientists. And Jared Harris better get a goddamn Emmy finally out of this performance. Loved that final scene with the KGB minister. "We should put that on our money". Boss.

Oops, that should be Valery.

[quote]Nuclear power is still the only viable solution to climate change.

No it isn't

This courtroom scene has more heart-stopping moments than the whole 8 seasons of Game of Thrones combined. So terrifying! So spine-tingling! Yet Boris and Valery's farewell chat is so heartbreaking and moving.

But it would be such a shame to see Jared and Stellan competing for the same award next year, two great actors so brilliant in two great roles. Emily is magnificent too, but she's a lone leading actress here. A perfect ten mini-series from the beginning to the end.

Agreed... that was a thrilling and heavy finale. I don't have many words right now... but it did end magnificently and I'm sad, yet satisfied. It's really tragic what happened to Legasov... what happened to everyone, really. I've been singing the praises of our main trio for the past five weeks, but I want to single out Paul Ritter who played Dyatlov. I honestly thought he was perfect. Aloof, aggressively condescending, and yet a compelling actor to watch. I thought this shot was especially effective.

The shot of the control rod and fuel channel caps jumping up and down was surreal as well.

“Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth, sooner or later that debt is paid.”

Paul Ritter is such a deplorable villain here. Yet he could slip into a comic role very effortlessly, like he did in No Offence.

[quote]“Every lie we tell incurs a debt to the truth, sooner or later that debt is paid.”

So it's evidently impossible that some people's debts won't be paid in total in this lifetime then.

I swear I've seen Paul Ritter before, but I combed through his IMDb profile and could find nothing I recognized him from. I've seen the Potter film he's in as well as Quantum of Solace, but I know that's not where I remember him from. Perhaps he just looks like another character actor.

All of the supporting cast were perfect, and even managed to look very much like their real-life counterparts. The plant managers, for example. This has been one of the best things I've seen on HBO in some time. Kudos to all involved.

R370, it’s bugging me where I know Ritter from, too.

R371, they did a great job casting the plant managers. The real Dyatlov was better looking than Ritter, though. He was sort of sexy.

Even the venerable The Economist had to weighed in on the greatness of Chernobyl.

“Chernobyl” is on track to become the highest-rated TV series ever

^^ dang - double past tense^^

Even the venerable The Economist had to weigh in on the greatness of Chernobyl.

The Chernobyl podcast is also fantastic, not your typical commentary or aftertalk drivel. Hosted by the brilliant Peter Segal.

I've been listening to the score by composer Hildur Guðnadóttir on repeat for the last few days. It's fantastic. She toured a nuclear power plant in Lithuania before composing the music. Loved the scritchy scratch underlay of the radiation crackling from a dosimeter.

It is interesting that the NY Times was almost alone in dismissing the show in it's review. The critic should be canned. Then the follow up article about how it's factually inaccurate. They seem obsessed with accuracy on this one show for some reason while giving so many other tv shows and movies a pass. Feels like someone made an editorial decision: we are NOT going to praise this under any circumstances.

Is it good?

The show? Yes, it's good. It's very good.

R365 I would think HBO will put Jared in the leading actor category. Stellar and Emily will be supporting. She could go either way, but I think Jared was the only true lead.

Thanks, R379. I will watch it.

NY Times must livid that there was no Jewish characters in the series. But this is a great drama/horror/thriller/tearjerker no matter what.

The Guardian gave the series three stars for its first episode, but then a glowing 5-star review for the finale, albeit from different reviewers ̶ extolling this would be a classic. Kinda same sentiment I had when I first watched the first episode. But when Emily Watson's character showed up, some inspiring bump just happened to the series. I can't pinpoint what that was, maybe the amazing chemistry between these three main actors. Above all, every performance from every character is simply pitch-perfect.

[quote]When the toxic dust settles on this show, director Johan Renck and screenwriter Craig Mazin will be remembered for crafting a remarkably cogent and multivalent drama, one aided by impeccable performances; Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård and Emily Watson have each never been better.

The lighting director deserves an Emmy for capturing perfectly the sickly Eastern European indoor lighting of the period.

Set direction and props were awesome as well. The podcast mentions how careful they were to get things right, down to the same helmets and fireman uniforms

It.s brilliant! Fuck The NY Times they are shit reviewers

It should win every award for which it's nominated and it should be nominated for all categories there are. I have never been so immensely impressed with a TV program this much since Rome.

20 Chernobyl Books and Movies to Check Out If You’re Obsessed With HBO’s Miniseries

[quote]HBO’s five-part miniseries “Chernobyl” came to an end June 3 with a stirring finale that exposed the physical and psychological toll the 1986 disaster left in its wake. Fans of the series hoping to further investigate the disaster are in luck as “Chernobyl” producer and writer Craig Mazin took to social media after the finale’s airing to share a handful of books and movies he used while researching and developing the project.

I predict the following nominations:

Outstanding Limited Series

Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie - Jared Harris

Lead Actor in a Limited Series or Movie - Stellan Skarsgard

Lead Actress in a Limited Series or Movie - Emily Watson

Supporting Actress in a Limited Series or Movie - Jessie Buckley

Directing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special - Johan Renck

Writing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Dramatic Special - Craig Mazin

Casting for a Limited Series, Movie, or Special - Nina Gold & Robert Sterne

Cinematography for a Limited Series or Movie - Jakob Ihre

Period Costumes - Odile Dicks-Mireaux

Prosthetic Makeup for a Series, Limited Series, Movie or Special - Daniel Parker

Music Composition for a Limited Series, Movie or Special - Hildur Guðnadóttir

Single-Camera Picture Editing for a Limited Series or Movie - Jinx Godfrey and/or Simon Smith depending on which episode they submit

Sound Editing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Special

Sound Mixing for a Limited Series, Movie, or Special

Outstanding Visual Effects

The only one I'm iffy about is Jessie Buckley, but I've noticed that the Emmys are pretty liberal when it comes to nominating various cast members from limited series, so I can see her sneaking in if there's enough good will.

Jessie Buckley's short scene which she talks to the nurse in Hospital Number 6 is so calmly heartrending. Two lines of abject misery, having to come to terms with the inevitable and agonizing death of her loved one.

[quote]It won't take much longer. I, uh...

[quote]I don't want him to die alone.

Robert Emms who plays Toptunov is so remarkable in his role too, I can still feel his character's anguish and guilt for his part in the disaster even under heavy prosthetics and makeup. And his crestfallen face when he follows Akimov to their march of death to open the valves in the reactor, it's still haunting me.

Agreed!

Episode 3's the one I'd submit for Jessie if I were the people responsible for making such decisions. It's also the episode that'll definitely win them that prosthetic makeup award. I also agree about Emms. The entire supporting cast did a fantastic job.

R387 according to GoldDerby, HBO is campaigning Skarsgard and both Watson and Buckley in supporting, while Harris is the sole person being campaigned in lead. I'm reasonably confident in Harris, Skarsgard, and Watson all getting nominated, but IMO Buckley is a toss up. But I agree with all of the rest of your predictions. It's gonna dominate the limited and tech categories.

For the poster who loves Emily Watson. If they put her in lead, she'll lose to Michelle Williams. She could win supporting.

Cool! Thanks for the info! I'm happy to see them push Jessie Buckley. I hope all four are nominated.

Personally I found True Detective very underwhelming. I hate when I've invested time in something and then it turns out to be a shitshow. I hope Chernobyl wins everything in its category.

I agree that is was outstanding. I was riveted the entire time.

But omg NOT ONE good looking guy in the whole series?? I know it was USSR in the ‘80s but COME ON! We needed more eye candy.

We had the hot firefighter, but he melted.

Jared and Stellan are attractive men, though perhaps not the degree of eye candy you were looking for. Regardless, this wasn't that type of show.

Stellan has my vote. I think he is hot and has been for years. Intensely sexy. And his son Alexander is not far behind.

It's the 1980's, everybody was making themselves look hideous back then: the hair, the clothes and the personality. It's the worst decade for mankind's looks and styles. However, I would have fucked Emily Watson's assistant at the Minsk Institute and some of the miners. And maybe Stellan, if he also allows me to fuck all of his real life sons.

Oh I forgot about the powerhouse performance of Michelle Williams in Foose/Verdon. So i might be a good strategy for Emily to get in the supporting actress category. But then again, I'm so torn to see Emily fighting for the sport against Keeley Hawes, another one of my favorite actresses, from Bodyguard in that group.

[quote]The 71st Primetime Emmy Awards will honor the best in U.S. prime time television programming from June 1, 2018 until May 31, 2019, as chosen by the Academy of Television Arts & Sciences.

Does this mean the excellent fifth episode of Chernobyl, aired on June 3, 2019, will be eligible for the Emmy 2020 as well since it didn't make the cutoff date this year?

Matthew Needham was the assistant's name.

And if I'm not mistaken, doesn't the show need to at least air within those dates? Since it aired in April that'd make the entire show eligible I'd think.

I like Barry Keoghan too. He's got such a unique look and presence about him.

Barry looks like he has a touch of the Downs.

No love for Adam Nagaitis?

Except for the very few names mentioned, it was a Festival of Fugly.

Barry Keoghan is so creepy in the Killing of a Sacred Deer, I mean, super creepy. I can never fantasize him as an eye candy after watching that film.

The best TV ever!!! Watch out for the fugly troll!!!

[quote]To break things down a step further, even, Chernobyl's finale is currently sitting on a 9.9 rating, which is pretty remarkable. That said, less than 5,000 people have voted for it, so it'll likely end up dipping to around the 9.7 score of Episodes 2 and 3 assuming more people chime in with their star-based opinions. If not, though, "Vichnaya Pamyat" could possibly rank up there with the highest-rated single eps.

[quote]NY Times must livid that there was no Jewish characters in the series.

Huh?

I can't believe they let all that hot Russian cock die from radiation.

Who's that at R405?

The NY Times loved that ABC series about the astronaut wives because of the Jewish character (made up and inserted into the real storyline), a tubby schnozzie love interest for the WASPiest of the wives.

Just a random Russian soldier, not even Soviet

Is this worth watching?

Is there any harm to animals depicted? I just need to know in advance. TIA.

R410 they shoot pets in episode 4.

Thanks very much, r411. I'll skip that episode.

Watch episode 4, but skip 25:00 - 49:00 for animal shooting. Yet the rooftop scene at the end is incredibly thrilling and terrifying.

Yeah, episode 4 is essential... all the episodes are essential, but there are sequences aside from the unfortunate animal shooting that are worth watching if you absolutely couldn't handle that. Also skip the opening scene.

Even those animal shooters, they are not trigger-happy bumpkins. Those are ordinary men who are following orders that something must be done. They are not laughing and celebrating after the kills; quite the contrary, are very distressed while carrying on their duty.

That's why this mini-series is such a masterpiece. It makes us care for those secretive people behind the Iron Curtain; the very people who are not, as we used to believe, pure evils out to destroy the whole world. They are flawed people who somehow sacrifice themselves to stop this horrifying meltdown from spreading poisons all over the world. Watch it and think about it, only one misstep and we are all finished. Terrifying!

Even RT, the mouthpiece of Russian propaganda, is having an apoplectic fit, inundating their website with a dozen of Chernobyl articles everyday.

‘Terrifying sight’: General portrayed in HBO’s ‘Chernobyl’ shares what disaster was really like

The major general, who is now 85, has been living with a so-called radiation disease for the last 33 years. He said that one of the leading Soviet doctors, Evgeny Chazov, was right when he warned the liquidators: “You’re going to suffer till the end of your life. Chernobyl won’t let you go.”

The sickness revealed itself through “bleeding gums and bloody diarrhea,” among other things.

“You made a tiny cut, while shaving, and it didn’t heal for two weeks after that.”

“I took all types of drugs. I have eight types of meds in the kitchen right now, which I take in the morning, at dinner and at night,” Tarakanov said.

At the end they said the Russian official death toll is still 31. When in reality it could be as high as 90,000.

Maybe it's my love for Mad Men but I find Jared attractive. Jared in the movie Happiness was kind of hot and he played a Russian!

Check out 1:13 in this Pripyat clip. The actual Friday night / possible the second - later Saturday evening second explosion Plant 4 Reactor fire footage - I've not seen this before anywhere in my post HBO watching google Chernobyl wormhole reading. Also this clip includes the real deal bus evacuation footage too of residents on the Sunday.

I lhappen to liike the Reznor-ish industrial music on this clip by personal preference- adds an extra dose of horrid surrealistic creep-o-rama horror. BUT some of you might wanna reduce the volume, so as just to take in the heartbreaking weird reality of these first days interspliced in this clip docu-footage with what appears to be later footage within the Chernobyl exclusion zone.

R418 - thank you for sharing, so horrifyingly evocative. The HBO series intensified the drama up a few notches by adding abandoned pets to the scene. Heartbreaking if I had to leave my dogs like that, I'd rather die in the exclusion zone with them.

Lately there have been too many series stretching limited content into too many episodes. This is the opposite: I wish it had been six to eight.

Chernobyl’s scripts are available for download, if you dare!

And I look forward to the companion bonus content piece "Pivotal Moment — The Trial" in which the show’s climactic trial scene is discussed in interviews with Renck, Mazin, Watson and Harris, coming out on June 24 with the digital release of the series.

Amazing mini-series. I hope HBO do some "event" series like this every year.

I wonder if the real Legasov played show-and-tell with the tiles at the real trial.

Unbelievable how flagrantly the former USSR lied, not only to its people, but the entire world. Trump would have fit in perfectly there.

If I'm not mistaken, none of our main characters were actually present during the trial.

R423. Wow. I knew the Emily Watson character was fictional, but thought they’d have some semblance of reality in the trial. So basically the only true thing depicted was the explosion.

There were plenty of other true things in the series, but certain aspects were dramatized. I'd listen to the Chernobyl podcast if you're interested in hearing more.

Jared Harris looks a bit like a toad...but I'd still fuck him. Especially if he keeps those huge 80's glasses on. They're hot.

Stellan could get it, too.

Great miniseries, I hope it wins multiple Emmys.

What's HBO's next big show or mini series?

Thank you the writer for constructing the fifth episode the way they did which explained how the disaster unfolded; dramatizing and yet simplifying the event. I have read Wikipedia many times but couldn't understand a thing; what graphite, what control rods, what AZ-5 button, what SCRAM, etc. Oh well. Perfectionists can wipe their collectively anal-retentive asses for all I care.

You really should listen to the podcast. It has some fascinating detail, such as the fact that Dyatalov had been in (caused?) a previous nuclear accident on a submarine and had been irradiated severely, to the point where they speculate he contaminated his own son, resulting in the boy dying of deadly leukemia. They flimed a sequence about it giving the idea that this chain of events made Dyatalov obsessed with demonstrating he was in control of the atom and may be why he drove the reactor to such an unsafe state. I hope they include that subplot in an extended edition release.

I'm slowly digesting the five podcasts right now: fascinating stuff which could have been made with visuals into some making-of featurette.

The Russians are getting so antsy and crazy!: Russia hates HBO's Chernobyl, decides to make its own series.

Of his story, Muradov says, “One theory holds that Americans had infiltrated the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and many historians do not deny that, on the day of the explosion, an agent of the enemy’s intelligence services was present at the station.” The heroes, then, will not be the scientists, soldiers, and civilians who helped prevent a further spread of radiation, but rather the KGB officers trying to thwart these CIA operatives.

Recently they Photographed the area in the last few years and amazingly the wildlife is coming back. Some of the photographs of wolves look like the wolves were healthy and robust. Life always finds a way I guess. Some of the pictures of the buildings were very haunting and are still decaying.

Yes, the wildlife looks very healthy and robust, because any wildlife that's sick or deformed dies.

Some scientists have gone into the irradiated zone to study the wild animals, and I believe there's still a high rate of birth defects. But wild animals don't keep their deformed children alive, unlike humans.

I loved loved loved it. However..

You know who absolutely HATED this series?

Masha Gessen.

She had major issues with the dramatic license, in particular the way the Soviet bureaucracy were depicted.

Pundits have to find a nit to write about instead of just saying, gee it was great.

I read over on AV Club that the Kremlin is pissed about this series and wants to put out their own, they are blaming the disaster on U.S. spies

R432 Masha is a common Russian boys name

I'm just about to watch this miniseries. One of the things that struck me about the real disaster was all the stories of the pets left behind. How people weren't allowed to take their pets, cats and rabbits dumped, and others such as the dogs chasing after the owners in the evac vehicles, until the dogs collapsed. Then the birds and small animals left in cages dying slowly of starvation and poisoning. Photographers went in weeks later and photographed, very sad. I always feel for the animals abandoned in the midst of disasters.

I hope you enjoy the series, R436! Everything you mentioned is addressed in the show. I'll probably rewatch it soon now that it's over. Such a great experience.

The NY Times and The New Yorker must be livid that there's no Jewish/Catholic characters in this series. There I said it, sue me.

What’s their problem? Chernobyl is a fantastic miniseries with some unforgettable performances. And I really love that podcast. It’s great.

Jared has a great ass!

According to IMDb his nickname is Hot Buns.

BAFTA Guru uploaded some nice 10 min interviews with director Johan Renck and our two main leads.

R435, Masha is a diminutive of Maria.

R444 my bad, I got it confused with Sasha

No new episode tonight :[.

Really don't get this. It's 5-hour mini-series, so how deep does she want the series to delve into? Someone is suffering from OCD here.

The truth about Chernobyl? I saw it with my own eyes…

Kim Willsher reported on the world’s worst nuclear disaster from the Soviet Union. HBO’s TV version only scratches the surface, she says

R397, yes the fifth episode will be considered for Emmys because the miniseries debuted before May 30th. From the behind the scenes with the director and producer, Emily Watson’s character is based on a bunch scientists that helped figure out Chernobyl and the aftermath but the show reflected those in her character to save time and confusion.

I hate that the last episode is not on demand. Screw you HBO for making it work to find. Excellent series.

There is a Russian guy on You tube who was 15 and in Kiev in 1986. Kiev was only 50 miles from Chernobyl.

He mentions that the detail in the series is incredible even down to the licence plates on the cars.

He also mentions some things that happened in Kiev on the day and days after Chernobyl. When anything of significance happened Classical Music would play on the radio until the authorities knew what they would say in any given situation. In this one the music went on and on and on and only were eventually small details given.

Most of the info came from banned Western radio stations whims the Soviets tried to block but stations like the BBC were able tell the Russians not to eat fresh food to lock windows and stay inside.

Many people were poisoned by iodine in an attempt to stop radiation they would drink it raw.

Every single one of the bus drivers who were forced to go Chernobyl and evacuate the population would be dead by their early 50s

No one could get out of Kiev because all the Russian Officials took their families out of Belurus and it was near impossible to buy a ticket out.

Finally and most horrifically the May Day parade was forced to occur on a day when the winds had changed and the radioactive clouds appears over Kiev. Gorbachev himself basically blackmailed the officials to hold the major parade as per normal. The amount of radiation that the people of Kiev were exposed to in the 24 period was basically something like 5 years per hour that radiation can be tolerated at a nuclear facility at worst conditions.

Chernobyl is happening to America right now, and Trumpism is making it worse.

When Mazin noted that “Chernobyl” was also about the contamination of Trump, they replied that Mazin didn’t know what he was talking about, even though he created the program they had just been celebrating. There was a particularly bizarre exchange that started with Stephen King. “It’s impossible to watch HBO’s Chernobyl without thinking of Donald Trump,” the novelist tweeted.

Mazin, who has a hearty 130,000 followers on Twitter, didn’t hesitate to correct the record. “Chernobyl was a failure of humans whose loyalty to (or fear of) a broken governing party overruled their sense of decency and rationality,” he replied.

R432 Well that's quite the coincidence. During the clean-up, when the liquidators were clearing debris from the roof of Reactor 4, they gave different segments nicknames. The most dangerous, most radioactive, most feared area-- where the robots were fried and bio-robots had to be used-- was nicknamed Masha.

Pretty sure it's mentioned in passing in episode 4.

Also, I highly recommend this companion documentary from Sky that aired the other day. It's amazing to hear directly from real liquidators-- firefighters, helicopter pilots, miners. They even have Bryukhanov's son. But the highlight for me was hearing from Ananenko, one of the 3 divers.

Just binged watched all 5 episodes. Jared Harris deserves an Emmy.

It was scary good

Several weeks after binge watching, "Chernobyl" still haunts me. In its entirety it's practically perfect.

Definitely one of the finest events we've had so far this year. Emmy noms are announced on the 16th!

B U M P

Emily Watson works a lot in UK television if you haven’t seen it, Appropriate Adult, with Dominic West and Monica Dolan as Fred and Rosemary West is definitely worth seeing. Search for a torrent. The Politician’s Husband with David Tennant in the title role is a sturdy BBC drama series, like Bodyguard but without the bodyguard or terrorism. It’s all Westminster intrigue.

It was great to see Emily and Stellan reunited in this, I don’t think they’ve worked together since Breaking The Waves. Has anyone found an interview with them where they talk about this?

Emily Watson has always been one of my favourites and a real inspiration. I never heard anything about her and Weinstein. I did see her years ago as Sonia in Uncle Vanya at The Donmar with Simon Russell Beale. Years ago I did a day’s work on Everest and sat next to hear for a few takes but obviously didn’t say anything to her. I remember later in the day when they were filling the survivors arrival back home at the airport (it was actually an old converted bank building) and there were a lot of extras filling the arrival hall so we all had to stand around and in between takes she way would come over and reset the cordons so there was enough room when all the actors entered the scene - I thought it was great that she took it upon herself to reset them every time.

Don't expect this to win any Emmys. Everything will go to "When They See Us." Political correctness, you see.

I just hope it gets all the Emmys it has been nominated for. It is truly outstanding on a second viewing.

I only have two criticisms of the show.

1. The way they dealt with the Jessie Buckley character. We follow her from the opening scene, she's the first one on screen who sees the blast. We watch her care for her husband as he declines, watch most of her pregnancy journey first hand.... then she kind of disappears from the action and in the end we find out about her fate from a few throwaway expositional lines about what happened to her baby that feel unnatural being said by the characters (as they're obviously directly addressed to the audience). Would it have killed them to even do a montage? Or why invest in the character so much only to not bother showing the most important aspect (basically the whole point) of her entire arc?

2. The episode with the animal killing. It's an interesting aspect of the Chernobyl disaster that isn't often discussed, and the episode itself is well made and effectively bleak. Barry Keoghan's performance is great. But this episode felt so out of place and inconsequential. I'd chalk it up to poor structuring more than anything else, but the way it was inserted in abruptly midway through the series, and then completely ditched to go 'back to the main action' didn't feel smooth. They might as well have just left it out.

Other than that, it's a brilliant miniseries. Well acted, well written. Of course it already has the benefit of a fascinating subject, but I love the way it's brought to life and it's quite beautifully shot too. Jared Harris is so moving, and it's wonderful to see Emily Watson and Stellan Skarsgard back together again after their work in Breaking The Waves (hers especially being one of the greatest performances ever committed to screen).

I won't be surprised if it loses a lot of Emmys to When They See Us, because that one hits on a more emotional level while Chernobyl perhaps more intellectually. I don't really have a problem with that as both are very good. But this is one of the few miniseries I would really call 'essential viewing'.