The release of each episode was accompanied by a podcast in which Mazin and NPR host Peter Sagal discuss instances of artistic license and the reasoning behind them.[4] While critics, experts and witnesses have noted historical and factual discrepancies in the series, the creators' attention to detail has been widely praised.[5][6]
Premise
Chernobyl dramatizes the story of the April 1986 nuclear plant disaster which occurred in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, Soviet Union, telling the stories of the people who were involved in the disaster and those who responded to it.[7] The series depicts some of the lesser-known stories of the disaster, including the efforts of the firefighters who were the first responders on the scene, volunteers, and teams of miners who dug a critical tunnel under Reactor 4.
The miniseries is based in large part on the recollections of Pripyat locals, as told by Belarusian Nobel laureateSvetlana Alexievich in her book Voices from Chernobyl.[8] Researchers have documented Alexievich's insertion of her own words into the testimonies of her interview subjects in this and others of her books, as well as her extensive revision—even from one edition to the next—of her interviews, which suggests that her works should not be taken as straightforward history.[9][10]
On April 26, 1988, at 1:23:45 a.m., Soviet chemist Valery Legasov hangs himself in his Moscow apartment after recording a series of memoirs on cassette tapes. Exactly two years earlier, Reactor No. 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant explodes near Pripyat, Ukrainian SSR.[14][15] Deputy Chief Engineer Anatoly Dyatlov dismisses the severity of the explosion, despite the fact that the core has exploded and is now exposed. Emergency services arrive, unaware of the danger posed by debris strewn from the explosion. Dyatlov meets with the Pripyat Executive Committee, who disregard the danger posed to the city and its inhabitants by forbidding evacuation and suspending communication to the outside world. Under Dyatlov's orders, Aleksandr Akimov and Leonid Toptunov manually open water valves to flood the damaged reactor, but in doing so are exposed to lethal radiation doses. In Moscow, Legasov is informed of what has happened and is ordered to the Kremlin to provide technical advice to the committee managing the response.
In Minsk, Byelorussian SSR, seven hours following the explosion, nuclear physicist Ulana Khomyuk detects a spike in radiation levels but her concerns are ignored by local authorities. At Pripyat Hospital (now overloaded with patients suffering from ARS), Lyudmilla Ignatenko finds out that her husband, firefighter Vasily has been sent to Moscow as well as several other ARS patients. Mikhail Gorbachev is briefed by Legasov that the event in Chernobyl is much more serious than initially reported, and Legasov is sent there with Boris Shcherbina to ascertain the severity in person. Boris remains skeptical of Legasov, even when Legasov points out the distinctive streak of blue light emanating from the reactor, meaning that the reactor is exposed and radiation is entering the atmosphere. A high-range dosimeter reading also proves Legasov correct, and the military is instructed to smother the fire with sand and boron. Khomyuk also arrives in Chernobyl to investigate the spike, and warns Legasov and Shcherbina that a disastrous steam explosion will occur if the superheated sand and boron makes contact with the accumulated valve water. A group of three volunteers enters the reactor to drain the water.
Though the basement is drained, a nuclear meltdown begins and threatens to leak into and contaminate the Pripyat and Dnieper rivers, the local water supply for 50 million people, plus crops and livestock. Coal miners from Tula, Russian SFSR, are enlisted to dig a tunnel and install a heat exchanger 12 meters directly underneath the plant. Meanwhile, Khomyuk is sent to a Moscow hospital, where she finds Dyatlov uncooperative but learns from the dying Toptunov and Akimov that the emergency shutdown initiated by Akimov triggered the explosion, a scenario deemed impossible. At the same time, Lyudmilla bribes her way into the hospital to be with her husband and sees with her own eyes his deteriorating condition. Khomyuk witnesses Lyudmilla entering Vasily's isolated bed and making contact with him, and threatens to expose the hospital's negligence but is arrested by KGB agents who had been following her. Legasov arranges her release; he and Shcherbina report to the Committee their plans, which require the mass mobilization of liquidators for decontamination. Lyudmilla later watches her husband and several other deceased ARS victims lowered into a mass grave, sealed into zinc caskets and buried in concrete.
A wider exclusion zone is ordered as Legasov's plans indicate. Troops are also deployed to dispose of abandoned and wild animals because of the threat posed by possible contamination. Shcherbina is enraged when an advanced police robot sent from West Germany instantly fails on the most irradiated level of the plant's roof, because the Central Committee falsely claimed to the West that the amount of radiation on the roof was only 2,000 roentgen as opposed to 15,000. This attempt to avoid state humiliation means that General Nikolai Tarakanov has little choice but to order 3,828 liquidators to clear the graphite debris by hand, with each given only 90 seconds to do so. Khomyuk gains access to classified documents and identifies a strikingly similar near incident in 1975 at the Leningrad Nuclear Power Plant, which it turns out Legasov knew about. She urges Legasov to testify in the eventual trial of Dyatlov and the plant management; Legasov will also address the International Atomic Energy Agency. Shcherbina, who has grown to understand the true impact and scale of what has happened and might happen again in the future, urges caution to avoid government retaliation. Khomyuk responds by informing them that Lyudmilla gave birth to a baby girl who died within hours, killed by the radiation absorbed from Lyudmilla's contact with her husband.
Dyatlov, Plant Director Viktor Bryukhanov and Chief Engineer Nikolai Fomin are put on trial for their mismanagement of the disaster. Shcherbina, Khomyuk and Legasov give testimony. Whilst Legasov attributes the incident to Dyatlov's blatant disregard for safety procedure, he does not hold him solely responsible. He reveals (though in doing so admits that his testimony at the IAEA conference in Vienna was a lie) that the boron-made control rods, meant to reduce reactivity, are actually tipped with graphite – a material that accelerates reactivity – solely because it was cheaper to do so. Legasov's revelation effectively exposes the Soviet government's responsibility for the suppression of this information – when Akimov engaged AZ-5 to shut down the reactor, he had unknowingly triggered the explosion. KGB Deputy Chairman Charkov privately informs Legasov that his testimony will be rejected by the state, and his role in preventing the disaster getting out of hand will be attributed to other people. The series' end credits reveal the fates of several key people involved in the clean-up of the Chernobyl disaster, and state that the show is dedicated to their bravery and sacrifices.
Production
Craig Mazin was the writer, creator, and producer of Chernobyl.
Development and writing
Writer Craig Mazin began researching for the project in 2014, by reading books and government reports from inside and outside the Soviet Union. Mazin also interviewed nuclear scientists to learn how a reactor works, and former Soviet citizens to gain a better idea of the culture in 1986. Mazin also read several first-person accounts in order to bring additional authenticity to the story. He explained, "When you're reading the personal stories of people who were there—people who lived near the plant, people who worked at the plant, people who were sent to Chernobyl as part of the effort to clean it up—in those individual accounts, that's really where the story came alive".[22]
Mazin's interest in creating the series originated when he decided to write something that addressed "how we're struggling with the global war on the truth right now".[23] Another inspiration is that he knew Chernobyl exploded, but he did not know why. He explained, "I didn't know why, and I thought there was this inexplicable gap in my knowledge ... So, I began reading about it, just out of this very dry, intellectual curiosity, and what I discovered was that, while the story of the explosion is fascinating, and we make it really clear exactly why and how it happened, what really grabbed me and held me were the incredible stories of the human beings who lived through it, and who suffered and sacrificed to save the people that they loved, to save their countrymen and to save a continent, and continued to do so, against odds that were startling and kept getting worse. I was so moved by it. It was like I had discovered a war that people just hadn't really depicted, and I became obsessed".[24] Mazin said that "The lesson of Chernobyl isn't that modern nuclear power is dangerous. The lesson is that lying, arrogance, and suppression of criticism are dangerous".[25]
In preparation for the miniseries, Mazin visited the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone.[26] Mazin made the decision in the early stages not to use Russian or Ukrainian accents, and instead, have the actors use their natural accents. Mazin explained, "We had an initial thought that we didn't want to do the 'Boris and Natasha' clichéd accent because the Russian accent can turn comic very easily. At first, we thought that maybe we would have people do these sort of vaguely Eastern European accents—not really strong but noticeable. What we found very quickly is that actors will act accents. They will not act, they will act accents and we were losing everything about these people that we loved. Honestly, I think after maybe one or two auditions we said 'OK, new rule. We're not doing that anymore'".[27] Mazin also did not cast any American actors, as that could potentially pull the audience out of the story.[28]
In early 2017, Carolyn Strauss joined the project as producer, and pitched the show with Mazin to HBO's Kary Antholis. According to Antholis: "It was the best pitch I've heard in 25 years of listening to pitches — there's nothing that really comes close to it".[29] Regardless, viewership expectations remained low during development, and the series was eventually assigned a Monday night time slot. Antholis convinced Sky UK to co-produce, lessening HBO's financial burden to around $15 million of the show's $40 million budget.[29]
On July 26, 2017, it was announced that HBO and Sky had given a series order to Chernobyl. It was HBO's first co-production with Sky UK. The five-episode miniseries was written by Craig Mazin and directed by Johan Renck. Mazin also served as an executive producer alongside Carolyn Strauss and Jane Featherstone, with Chris Fry and Renck acting as co-executive producers.[7][30] On March 11, 2019, it was announced that the miniseries would premiere on May 6, 2019.[31] On June 4, 2019, Craig Mazin made the original scripts of all episodes available for downloading as PDFs (see External links below).[32]
A companion podcast for the miniseries had new episodes published as each TV episode aired on HBO.[33] The podcast featured conversations between Mazin and host Peter Sagal including discussions of where the show was as true as possible to historical events and where events were consolidated or modified as part of artistic license.[4]
Principal photography began in April 2018 in Lithuania.[30] Initial filming started on May 13, 2018, in Fabijoniškės, a residential district in Vilnius, Lithuania, which was used to portray the Ukrainian city of Pripyat, since the district maintained an authentic Soviet atmosphere. An area of densely built panel housing apartments served as a location for the evacuation scenes. Director Johan Renck heavily criticised the amount of diverse and eye-catching modern windows in the houses, but was not concerned about removing them in post-production. At the end of March, production moved to Visaginas, Lithuania, to shoot both the exterior and interior of the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, a decommissioned nuclear power station that is sometimes referred to as "Chernobyl's sister" due to its visual resemblance and the nuclear reactor design used at both Chernobyl and Ignalina (RBMK nuclear power reactor). In early June 2018, production moved to Ukraine to shoot minor final scenes.[36] The filming of Chernobyl took 16 weeks.[37] The series has a reported production budget of $40 million, as part of a $250 million deal between HBO and Sky.[38] According to series cinematographer Jakob Ihre, various Soviet-era films–namely Andrei Rublev, Stalker and Come and See–inspired the look of the miniseries.[39]
The musical score was composed by Icelandic composer Hildur Guðnadóttir. In August 2018, she began recording the score with Chris Watson at the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, where the series was being preliminarily shot.[40] She used the recordings from the power plant, deciding not to depend on instruments and pre-recorded material to create the score, as she wanted to experience from a listener's perspective on what it is like to actually be inside of a power plant.[41] The original score album was released by the record labels Deutsche Grammophon and WaterTower Music on May 31, 2019,[42][43] with a vinyl edition released by Decca on September 6, 2019.[44]
Historical accuracy
The series was praised in the media for being exhaustively researched,[45] but some commentators noted inaccuracies or liberties were taken for dramatic purposes, such as Legasov being present at the trial.[46][47] The first episode depicts Legasov timing his suicide down to the second (1:23:45) to coincide with the second anniversary of the Chernobyl explosion. Legasov actually committed suicide a day later. The epilogue acknowledges that the character of Ulana Khomyuk is fictional, a composite of Soviet scientists. Journalist Adam Higginbotham, who spent a decade researching the disaster and authored the non-fiction account Midnight in Chernobyl, points out in an interview that there was no need for scientists to "uncover the truth" because "many nuclear scientists knew all along that there were problems with this reactor—the problems that led ultimately to an explosion and disaster".[48] Artistic license was also used in the depiction of the "Bridge of Death", from which spectators in Pripyat watched the aftermath of the explosion; the miniseries asserts that the spectators subsequently died, a claim which is now generally held to be an urban legend.[49][50][51]
The series also discusses a potential third steam explosion, due to the risk of corium melting through to the water reservoirs below the reactor building, as being in the range of 2 to 4 megatons. This would have been physically impossible under the circumstances, as exploding reactors do not function as thermonuclear bombs.[52][53] According to series author Craig Mazin, the claim was based on one made by Belarusian nuclear physicist Vassili Nesterenko about a potential 3–5 Mt third explosion, even though physicists hired for the show were unable to confirm its plausibility.[54]
The series' production design, such as the choice of sets, props, and costumes, has received high praise for its accuracy. Several sources have commended the attention to even minor setting details, such as the use of actual Kyiv-region license plate numbers, and a New Yorker review states that "the material culture of the Soviet Union is reproduced with an accuracy that has never before been seen" from either Western or Russian filmmakers.[55][48][5][56] Oleksiy Breus, a Chernobyl engineer, commends the portrayal of the symptoms of radiation poisoning;[57]Robert Gale, a doctor who treated Chernobyl victims, states that the miniseries overstated the symptoms by suggesting that the patients were radioactive.[58] In a more critical judgment, a review from the Moscow Times highlights some small design errors: for instance, Soviet soldiers are inaccurately shown as holding their weapons in Western style and Legasov's apartment was too "dingy" for a scientist of his status.[59]
In a 1996 interview, Lyudmilla Ignatenko said that her baby "took the whole radioactive shock [...] She was like a lightning rod for it".[60] This perception that her husband, Vasily, was radioactive and caused the death of her daughter soon after birth was recreated in the miniseries. However, Ukrainian medical responder Alla Shapiro, in a 2019 interview with Vanity Fair, said such beliefs were false, and that once Ignatenko was showered and out of his contaminated clothing, he would not have been dangerous to others, precluding this possibility.[61] During an interview to BBC News Russian in 2019, Lyudmilla Ignatenko described how she suffered harassment and criticism when the series was aired. She claimed reporters hounded her at home in Moscow and even jammed their foot in her door as they tried to interview her, and that she suffered criticism for exposing her unborn daughter to Vasily, despite the fact she hadn't known anything about radiation then and that risk to a fetus from such exposure is infinitesimally small.[58] She said she never gave HBO and Sky Atlantic permission to tell her story, saying there had been a single phone call offering money after filming had been completed. She thought the call was a hoax because it came from a Moscow number and hung up. HBO Sky rejects this, saying they had exchanges with Lyudmilla before, during and after filming with the opportunity to participate and provide feedback and at no time did she express a wish for her story to not be included.[62]
The portrayal of Soviet officials, including the plant management and central government figures, received some criticism. Breus, the Chernobyl engineer, argues that the characters of Viktor Bryukhanov, Nikolai Fomin and Anatoly Dyatlov were "distorted and misrepresented, as if they were villains".[57] Some reviews criticized the series for creating a stark moral dichotomy, in which the scientists are depicted as overly heroic while the government and plant officials are uniformly villainous.[55][63][64][65] The occasional threats of execution from government officials were also seen by some as anachronistic: Masha Gessen of the New Yorker argues that "summary executions, or even delayed executions on orders of a single apparatchik, were not a feature of Soviet life after the nineteen-thirties".[55][59] Higginbotham takes a more positive view of the portrayal of the authorities, arguing that the unconcerned attitude of the central government was accurately depicted.[48]
Release
The miniseries premiered on May 6, 2019, on HBO. In the United Kingdom and Republic of Ireland, it premiered on May 7, 2019, on Sky Atlantic.
Chernobyl received widespread critical acclaim. On review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes, the series has an approval rating of 95% based on 104 reviews, with an average rating of 8.9/10. The website's critics consensus reads: "Chernobyl rivets with a creeping dread that never dissipates, dramatizing a national tragedy with sterling craft and an intelligent dissection of institutional rot."[68] On Metacritic, it has a weighted average score of 82 out of 100, based on 27 critics, indicating "universal acclaim".[69]
Reviewers for The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and the BBC observed parallels to contemporary society by focusing on the power of information and how dishonest leaders can make mistakes beyond their comprehension.[70] Sophie Gilbert of The Atlantic hailed the series as a "grim disquisition on the toll of devaluing the truth";[71]Hank Stuever of The Washington Post praised it for showcasing "what happens when lying is standard and authority is abused".[72]Meera Syal praised Chernobyl as a "fiercely intelligent exposition of the human cost of state censorship. Would love to see similar exposé of the Bhopal disaster".[73]David Morrison was "struck by the attention to accuracy" and says the "series does an outstanding job of presenting the technical and human issues of the accident."[74]
Jennifer K. Crosby, writing for The Objective Standard, says that the miniseries "explores the reasons for this monumental catastrophe and illustrates how it was magnified by the evasion and denial of those in charge," adding that "although the true toll of the disaster on millions of lives will never be known, Chernobyl goes a long way toward helping us understand [its] real causes and effects."[75] In a negative article titled "Chernobyl: The Show Russiagate wrote," Aaron Giovannone of the American left-wing publication Jacobin wrote that "even as we worry about the ongoing ecological crisis caused by capitalism, Chernobyl revels in the failure of the historical alternative to capitalism, which reinforces the status quo, offering us no way out of the crisis."[76]
Russian, Belarusian and Ukrainian response
The miniseries was well-received by some critics and audiences in Russia.[77][78][79]Vladimir Medinsky, Russian culture minister, whose father was one of the Chernobyl liquidators, called the series "masterfully made" and "filmed with great respect for ordinary people".[80] It was reported that Russian state-run NTV television channel has been producing its own "patriotic" version of the Chernobyl story in which the CIA plays a key role in the disaster.[81][82] The Russians then claimed that the series in question had been in production since before HBO's miniseries and was not created in response to it.[83] An apparent trailer for the series was uploaded to YouTube but was later deleted following negative reaction from the Russian viewers.[84]
In a statement, Sergey Malinkovich, the head of the executive committee of the central committee of the Communists of Russia party, called for a criminal libel lawsuit to be brought under the Criminal Code of Russia against Chernobyl's writer, director. and producers, describing the show as "disgusting".[85][86][87] He also demanded that Russia's Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor) block access to the "filthy" mini-series.[88] Marianna Prysiazhniuk of Vice Media noted that multiple Russian media outlets describe the miniseries as one-sided, incomplete, or anti-Russian propaganda.[89]Argumenty i Fakty dismissed the show as "a caricature and not the truth" and "The only things missing are the bears and accordions!" said Stanislav Natanzon, lead anchor of Russia-24, one of the country's main state-run news channels.[90]
In Ukraine, Anna Korolevska, deputy director at the Ukrainian National Chernobyl Museum in Kyiv, said "Today young people coming to power in Ukraine know nothing about that disaster in 1986. It was a necessary film to make and HBO have obviously tried their best; as for us, we are going to create a special tour about Chernobyl's historic truth, inspired by the HBO series."[91] Bermet Talant, a Ukrainian journalist, noted that "In Russia, a state that still takes pride in the Soviet legacy, the series has faced criticism from the official media. Meanwhile, many in Ukraine appreciated the series for humanizing a tragic chapter in the country's history. [...] Ukrainian viewers also appreciated HBO's Chernobyl for praising the heroism and self-sacrifice of ordinary people."[92]
Belarusian Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich, whose book inspired the series, said "We are now witnessing a new phenomenon that Belarusians, who suffered greatly and thought they knew a lot about the tragedy, have completely changed their perception about Chernobyl and are interpreting this tragedy in a whole new way. The authors accomplished this, even though they are from a completely different world – not from Belarus, not from our region." She also noted its popularity with young Belarusians.[93]
Reception in China
At the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic in China, Chinese netizens drew parallels between the Soviet response to the Chernobyl disaster and the initial handling of the coronavirus outbreak by the Chinese government.[94][95] As a response, the page for Chernobyl on Douban, which by that point had amassed more than 200,000 ratings with an average of 9.6 out of 10, was taken down.[96]
Max Dennison, Lindsay McFarlane, Claudius Christian Rauch, Clare Cheetham, Laura Bethencourt Montes, Steven Godfrey, Luke Letkey, Christian Waite and William Foulser (for "1:23:45")
^At the end of episodes "Vichnaya Pamyat", "Open Wide, O Earth", and "Please Remain Calm" he is listed as "KGB Chairman Charkov". However, during a conversation between Legasov and Charkov (episode 3, 46m 48s) they say:
Legasov: "You are the first deputy chairman of the KGB."
Charkov: "I am."
^At the end of episode "Open Wide, O Earth" you can hear the recruiting officer reading Pavel's identification papers out loud: "Pavel Ivanovich Gremov".
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