TELEVISION REVIEW
“CHERNOBYL”
Miniseries premiere Monday at 9 p.m. on HBO.
Grade: B+
“Chernobyl” walks you into the heart of hell.
The five-part miniseries debuting Monday on HBO dramatizes the April 26, 1986, explosion at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine. Under director Johan Renck’s (“Breaking Bad”) insightful eye and based on extensive, exhaustive original research by creator, executive producer and writer Craig Mazin (“The Huntsman: Winter’s War”), what emerges is a harrowing clash between thick-headed bureaucrats and a brave few who recognized the deadly threat.
After a brief prologue in 1988 that sets a dark mood indeed, the series drops back two years earlier to the night of the blast, to firefighter Vasily (Adam Nagaitis, “The Terror”) and wife Lyudmilla (Jessie Buckley, “Beast”), a young couple very much in love and living in an apartment in nearby Pripyat. Lyudmilla gets up in the middle of the night for a glass of water. The bedroom window brightens from a faraway flash and the apartment shakes violently.
At the plant, the technicians immediately understand the gravity of the crisis.
The intimidating plant director dismisses all reports as treason and insists there is just a fire on the roof of one of the buildings.
Vasily, with a smile and a kiss, heads out into the night to join his brothers on the front line.
The fire is far greater than he could ever imagine.
And almost immediately the firefighters’ faces and hands redden, as if from a bad sunburn. One firefighter doubles over in agony, vomiting.
In Pripyat, Lyudmilla and her neighbors, mothers and fathers and children of all ages, gather to watch at the edge of town, some of the youngsters dancing in the strange dust that falls like snow.
“Chernobyl” leaves no doubt: The lucky ones died first. The miniseries captures with harrowing detail the course of radiation poisoning, as flesh becomes seared and organs fail. There are moments that are not for the squeamish.
Local officials scramble to do damage control with the party leadership and downplay the explosion.
Nuclear physicist Valery Legasov (Jared Harris, “Mad Men”) is not fooled. Drafted onto a committee to provide legitimacy, he is appalled by the data he sees — and recognizes all of Europe, even beyond, could be poisoned by radiation from the explosion unless they get it under control.
Deputy Prime Minister Boris Shcherbina (an excellent Stellan Skarsgard) appears to be another career politician, profoundly irritated by Legasov’s concern, but he becomes his greatest ally.
Hundreds of kilometers away, nuclear physicist Ulana Khomyuk (Academy Award nominee Emily Watson, “Breaking the Waves”) becomes aware of the rise in radiation and vows to find out who is accountable even as the KGB circles.
In this true-life horror tale of a government refusing to acknowledge scientific fact and its ruthless demand for obedience, “Chernobyl” feels especially timely.
“What is the cost of lies?” one character muses at the opening.
“The real danger is, if we hear enough lies, we no longer recognize the truth at all.”
