Chernobyl
The memorial and masterpiece starts on free TV
Valery Legasov (Jared Harris, left) and Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård) have little hope of averting the disaster
© Sky UK Ltd / HBO
With “Chernobyl” a masterpiece has been created that is at the limit of the bearable. The miniseries will be on free TV on April 12th.
The tiny town of Chernobyl in northern Ukraine would probably not mean anything to anyone in this country had it not been for a catastrophic disaster in the nearby nuclear power plant on April 26, 1986, the effects of which are still noticeable today, almost exactly 35 years later. Around two years after the publication of “Chernobyl”, the British-American miniseries will celebrate its German free TV premiere on ProSieben from April 12th (8:15 pm). If you are now pondering whether you should really watch unbelievable suffering at prime time and in double episodes, here are the reasons why series creator Craig Mazin (50) has created an impossible to ignore masterpiece.
“Chernobyl” is a five-part memorial. One that shows in a ruthless, realistic and unbearable way the miserable fate of first-aiders, firefighters and residents of the near to distant area. How the rulers of the USSR did everything possible to cover up the accident or to dismiss it as a triviality. And how an even bigger catastrophe could be prevented by a hair’s breadth and at the cost of further human lives.
Viewers are shocked and excited
Hardly an award show came around in 2019 and 2020 to shower “Chernobyl” with prizes. At the Golden Globes there were awards for “Best Miniseries” and for “Best Supporting Actor – Series, Miniseries or TV Movie” (Stellan Skarsgård, 69). In 2019, ten Primetime Emmys were cleared away.
The paradoxical feeling that “Chernobyl” evokes in the audience has been and is again and again made abundantly clear when looking at the social networks. On the one hand, the series is “massively unpleasant to look at”, “shocking to the core” and “oppressive”. On the other hand, there is also “brilliantly good”, a “10/10”, a “masterpiece” and a series “in which every setting, every single frame fits”.
The cast around the main actors Jared Harris (59), Emily Watson (54) and Stellan Skarsgård delivers top performance across the board. It is not the really big Hollywood names who have to torment their way through the atomically contaminated slag in “Chernobyl”, but rather talented, but largely unknown actors. Accordingly, one buys it from them immediately, as everyone, to be sent to death – or worse – by the authorities.
Reality writes the most terrible scripts
A perfidious trend emerged after the first publication in May 2019 – tourism in the disaster area was booming according to various media reports downright. Disaster tourism that is unparalleled? Or something else? It could benevolently be attested that the series shows and depicts such incredible things that viewers have to see it with their own eyes to be able to believe it. You will definitely find yourself reading more about the disaster of 1986 on your own – and discovering that the miniseries is based on an immensely high level of realism.
If you watch “Chernobyl”, even exciting things like the “Red Wedding” from “Game of Thrones” seem like a fairy tale hour for children. No comparison to the real hell from “Chernobyl”, which is so difficult to bear and impossible to ignore.