1177 words

Chernobyl

Genre Historical drama

Tragedy

Created by Craig Mazin

Written by Craig Mazin

Directed by Johan Renck

Chernobyl

is a 2019 historical drama television miniseries that revolves around the Chernobyl disaster of 1986 and the cleanup efforts that followed. The series was created and written by Craig Mazin and directed by Johan Renck. It features an ensemble cast led by Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsg?rd, Emily Watson and Paul Ritter. The series was produced by HBO in the United States and Sky UK in the United Kingdom.

The five-part series premiered simultaneously?in the United States on May 6, 2019, and in the United Kingdom on May 7. It was acclaimed by critics, who lauded the performances, cinematography, historical accuracies, atmosphere, direction, screenplay, musical score and tone. At the 71st Primetime Emmy Awards, it received nineteen nominations and won for Outstanding Limited Series, Outstanding Directing, and Outstanding Writing, while Harris, Skarsg?rd, and Watson received acting nominations. At the 77th Golden Globe Awards, the series won for Best Miniseries or Television Film and Skarsg?rd won for Best Supporting Actor in a Series, Miniseries or Television Film.??

While the series was exhaustively researched, some liberties were taken for dramatic purposes. The release of each episode was accompanied by a podcast in which Mazin and NPR host Peter Sagal discuss these changes and the reasoning behind them.?While critics, experts and witnesses have noted certain minor historical and factual discrepancies in the miniseries (which were largely a matter of dramatic license), the creators' attention to detail has been widely praised.??

Episodes

Chapter1

"1:23:45"

On 26 April 1986 at 01:23:45 a.m., Reactor 4 of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant explodes near Pripyat, Ukraine. 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. Valery Legasov is informed of what has happened and is ordered to Chernobyl to provide technical advice to the committee managing the response.

Chapter 2

"Please Remain Calm"

In Minsk, Belarus 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 adamantly skeptical that Legasov is wrong, 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 dosimeter reading also proves Legasov correct, and the military is instructed to stop 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 core makes contact with the accumulated valve water. A group of volunteers successfully drain the water, but further dangers lie ahead.

Chapter 3

"Open Wide, O Earth"

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 are enlisted to dig a tunnel and install a heat exchanger 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. 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 in a zinc casket and buried in concrete.

Chapter 4

"The Happiness of All Mankind"

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, with the mass killings of domesticated dogs emotionally scarring even the toughest of men. Shcherbina is enraged when an advanced police robot sent from West Germany instantly fails on the most irradiated level of the plant's roof, failing 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 12,000. 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 each 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.

Chapter 5

"Vichnaya Pamyat"

Dyatlov, and Committee members Bryukhanov and 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 a hearing in Vienna was a lie) that the boron-made control rods, meant to reduce reactivity, actually had their tips manufactured from graphite – a material that accelerates reactivity. Legasov's revelation effectively makes the government responsible for the suppression of this information – when Akimov engaged AZ-5 to shut down the reactor, he had unknowingly triggered the explosion. Senior KGB deputy 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.

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@Wikipedia