There’s no need to insist on taking my amusing (to me) mental picture of celebrating the triumph of HBO Chernobyl literally, throw rolleyes at me or explain the meaning of ordinary words being used either.
I think the the rave reviews are exaggerated. I believe people are are reacting so strongly in favor because they are not very acquainted with nuclear energy, the details of the Chernobyl disaster, and the fictionalized parts of the series. That’s what we do here, offer different points of view for discussion.
I thought it was an absolutely fantastic show, and I’m familiar with the details of the Chernobyl disaster and know more about nuclear energy than the average person. I don’t work in nuclear power, but I’m a mechanical engineer and remember in at least one engineering class reading about the disaster and about how so many things lined up for everything to go wrong. I’ve also read a bit more about nuclear power; the book The Radioactive Boy Scout is one I’ve recommended to multiple people. I’m very far from an expert but none of the specifics of nuclear power said in the show was a surprise to me.
But even though I knew a lot of the details, seeing it portrayed was harrowing. I thought it was very well done. There were a lot of characters and a lot of things going on but they kept things fairly clear. All the actors were fantastic, from the main three of Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård, and Emily Watson, to the rest of the cast even in the smallest roles. The score was also great; the show would have been dramatic even if there was no score because of the inherent drama going on but the haunting score really increased the harrowing nature of some of the scenes.
Obviously there was some stuff that was changed, but it seems that they went as much for realism as possible from what I’ve read. The courtroom scenes seem to be the most changed, which makes sense to me as the best way to wrap up the show and explain things that happened and do the flashbacks. I’ve read many tweets from people and relatives of people who grew up in the USSR and who said it felt very true to life regarding the people in the show. I’ve also started listening to the podcast, where Craig Mazin, the show creator, said he had someone who lived in the USSR go over the script and give notes and make some changes.
I think the show is a great achievement, it’s a show I’ve been recommending to everyone, but also telling them to only watch when they are emotionally ready for it.
It had nowhere the emotional impact for me that you (and others) are describing. Not sure if that is because I was comparing it to my knowledge of Chernobyl, or I thought some dramatizations were unnecessary and soured their credibility, or some creative choices lame (soviet miners for example), or what.
I will say again that I think the feel for the era, Pripyat, the power plant, Moscow, etc was truly excellent in my opinion (like I’d expect from HBO). They obviously put a lot of work into that.
Dyatlov did write a book (am I misremembering?), so people can judge what he had to say for himself. I have only read excerpts, but he seems to suggest that they didn’t really (at least knowingly) violate regulations, and, even if they did, the reactor shouldn’t have been able to explode (nor did they know it could).
But yeah, even although that was the most concocted part of the whole thing, it was so well executed. Respectful of the audience too - sort of “here comes the science, but we trust you to follow this, let’s go” if you see what I mean.
I want to believe that article but it contains some pretty substantial mistakes itself. The helicopter crash was depicted in the show as the rotor hitting a cable, pretty much identically to the linked video upthread of the real-life crash.
The part where he says the show gets it wrong by depicting the crash as due to radiation because in real life the crash happened when the rotor hit a cable.
In the show, the crash happened when the rotor hit a cable, the same as real life.
I believe the position of the article to be essentially correct about the science and facts. Although I don’t care for some of the tone that seems to minimize the dangers of ionizing radiation and in his apology of nuclear energy he conveniently omits to mention the very serious problem of radioactive waste from spent fuel.
The TV series strongly suggested the helicopter crash was caused by radiation. It was not obvious at all that there was contact with a crane, if that was the intention. But that is a pretty minor quibble.
I have no way of knowing the facts relating to the “bridge of death” but a 100% mortality rate from ARS for bystanders miles away when even first responders had mortality rates below that seems highly unlikely.
Well, except for the tangent about bullets, which I don’t really understand. The analogy in the TV show about how a nuclear reactor works involving bullets seemed perfectly apt for layman (Shcherbina).
In the show the guy says something in alarm about how they shouldn’t fly directly over the reactor, presumably because of the radiation. The helicopter then flies directly over the reactor, loses control, hits a cable, and goes down. The clear implication, to me and my wife as we watched it, was that the pilot or the electronics got fried by radiation and that caused the crash.
There’s some creative liberty there, although I’m not sure how serious. There probably was radiation spewing out of the exposed reactor so that part seems fine, the intention seemed to be say that the pilots hadn’t been briefed about the radiation risk. Based on everything I’m reading now, that probably wasn’t the case, there does seem to be a lot of exaggeration about things like that. The cleanup wasn’t perhaps as incompetent as it was made out to be.
That’s exactly what it meant to imply—otherwise they would have mentioned the cable. (After watching, I had to google “chernobyl helicopter” to see what was supposed to have happened in the scene. What I saw was helicopter passes above radiation, helicopter fals apart.)
The fact that you didn’t notice it doesn’t mean they didn’t show it. The fact that the author of that article didn’t notice it and then used it as an example of a mistake undermines my faith in that author’s attention to detail. That’s why I’d like to buy into that article but can’t.
