The five-part HBO series dramatises the story of the 1986 nuclear accident, one of the worst man-made catastrophes in history, and of the brave men and women who made incredible sacrifices to save not just the Soviet Union, but the whole of Europe, from unimaginable disaster.
Directed by Johan Renck (Breaking Bad, The Walking
Dead), Chernobyl stars Emmy nominee Jared Harris (The Crown, Mad
Men) as nuclear physicist Valery Legasov; People’s Choice nominee Stellan
Skarsgård (Mamma Mia, Good Will Hunting) as deputy prime minister Boris
Shcherbina; Oscar nominee Emily Watson (Hilary and Jackie, Breaking the
Waves) as nuclear physicist Ulana Khomyuk, and 2019 British Actress of the
Year Jessie Buckley (Taboo, The Last Post) as Lyudmilla
Ignatenko, the wife of one of the first firefighters to respond.
Rotten Tomatoes recently hailed Chernobyl
as “TV’s most scary offering in years… where history and reality are more
terrifying than zombies.”
The Chernobyl explosion was the result of a routine
safety test gone wrong, but the series makes it clear the catastrophe was
caused less by individual human error and more by the broader culture of fear
within the Soviet Union at the time, where a culture of denialism and
blame-shifting had become entrenched, and where, as executive producer Jane
Featherstone (Broadchurch) puts it, “Everyone was afraid of the
system.”
“When you start to look at all the different causes of
this accident to happen, it’s an accumulation of that kind of a mentality,
which is that it’s more convenient to believe comfortable truths and
comfortable facts, than it is to face difficult choices and difficult
realities,” says Jared Harris.
Or as his character Valery Legasov says in a key
scene, “That is how a RBMK reactor core explodes – lies.”
But while South Africans may find some chilling
parallels watching Chernobyl, they’ll also be inspired by the story of
its heroic clean-up.
“The Soviets and particularly the people of Ukraine
and Russia and Belarus threw themselves at this task in a way that is shocking
and beautiful and terrifying and heart-breaking,” says writer and executive
producer Craig Mazin, Chernobyl’s writer/executive producer. “We’re
talking about 700 000 people sent to clean up this impossibly contaminated
area.”
Many of these heroes did not receive a hero’s welcome.
“These were scientists trying to solve a mystery within a system that did not
want them to solve the mystery,” says Mazin of his lead characters. “They were
put on trial. Scientists involved in this were threatened. Their families were
threatened. But yet they did it anyway, because they understood as scientists
that the truth was something that could no longer be hidden away.”
As he says about some of the other heroes at Chernobyl,
“There was no expectation that they would survive. But they did it
nonetheless.”
The
show is now available to stream on Showmax.
