Chernobyl Mini Series Review

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Imagine you put your hand in a fire, but this fire does not hurt, you can barely feel something warm from it. Meanwhile, you hand is melting off… Imagine instead of placing your hand into the fire, you were just close enough to only be burnt drastically if you stay there for a long enough time, and the person right beside you knew and did not tell you until it is too late and you were already going to lose your hand or maybe even worse… Radiation is a complex and horrific death process that is described in the HBO series Chernobyl

Some of the greatest stories to be told in the history of the world are those that have been silenced or forgotten. Chernobyl is one of the best series I have had the pleasure of watching since Breaking Bad. Yeah I said it! It is a profound study of consequences in a horrific and truthful manner.

Hundreds of thousands of people dead and a large majority of those were due to ignorance. I think if there is something controversial about my opinion on this series it’s that: there are some characters in this telling of the story that I absolutely saw as evil, antagonistic and deserving of the consequences they received. Some of the people acted on ignorance, some on fear, some on bravery, some in self-interest and some in selfish stupidity. I really loved how they did not just show the black and the white, but all kinds of gray. And it is OUR role as an audience, to try and group the people into groups of ignorant, irresponsible, evil, well intentioned and victim; taking into account that people could very well be in more than one group at a time.

The way the plot attracts attention, builds tension, creates suspense and occasionally punches you in the stomach is a jaw dropping capability that derives from great writing and impactful direction and design of every scene. And the acting is magnificent! The back and forth between Jared Harris and Stellan Skarsgård keeps you GLUED to your TV or phone or wherever you are watching this awesome series. Their relationship grows, clashes and invests the audience towards the side of one or the other. Some of the best use of plot exposition I have ever seen is present through them, as we need to take into account VERY complex explanations have to take place in order for the audience to not become alienated by the nuclear science. Thanks to the effectiveness of this explanation the plot benefits, in that, the audience suffers more from knowledge of the true gravity of every action and minute that goes by.

Finally, I am very happy that unlike Game of Thrones or How I Met Your Mother, Chernobyl knows how to end a series. Great wrap up, beautifully respectful while at the same time being horrendously realistic in… It relies on silence and subtlety to take you to a respectful yet heavy ending. I wish HBO would learn from this successful mini series and make a couple more on stories that ought to be told in a verisimilar way. A must watch that will not be easy for all audiences.

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