HBO's Chernobyl

angeliz2k

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Has anyone else been watching this? It's incredibly well-done. The visuals are stunning and haunting, and it's written well--just enough scientific jargon to make it sound credible without losing the audience. And I am now well-aware that a Geiger counter is also a dosimeter. And I know a lot more about how a nuclear reactor works.

Some mildly spoilery stuff ahead.

They build an incredible amount of tension for a show where we know how things are going to turn out. We know that those firefighters aren't going to make it, and that's what makes it so tense--because you know they don't know, and you know they're going to find out eventually. You cringe every time someone gets close, because you know they're going to die. And yet people kept going, some of them because they didn't understand what was happening, some of them because the job had to be done. So much individual valor and tragedy, and then there's the Soviet political machine overlaying everything. Within that, you feel the tension between people whose only priority is their political career, those who reluctantly see that too many lives are at stake and that maybe they need at least some honesty, and those who are only interested in keeping the disaster from deepening. It feels like a political thriller and a horror movie rolled up in one, made all the more compelling because of course it's true.
 

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The best cosmic horror show I've ever seen. That last episode was brutal. I mean, they all are, but once the liquidators start doing there thing...yeah.
 

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It is brilliant and brutal and amazing. Vouch about the most episode, OMG. :cry:
 

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I would also highly recommend the podcast with Craig Mazin, and I'm slightly allergic to podcasts.
 

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It's an incredible show.

There is a book of first-person interviews called Voices From Chernobyl, written by Russian journalist Svetlana Alexievich, for which she won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2015. I cannot help but believe that the book informed a lot of the "human" part of this series. The fireman's wife, and the story of the soldiers who had to deal with pets/livestock are straight from the book. I could only read one interview at a time, with a week to decompress, when I read the book, so I can't recommend it in the normal way. It's powerful, sad, terrible, and worth reading so the knowledge of what happened to people there isn't lost. But it's hard. The show is doing an amazing job of capturing all of that and more.
 

mrsmig

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I think it's extraordinary. Beyond the story, which is riveting, there's some great camera work and oh! that score. Chilling.
 

angeliz2k

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Oh, awesome, a book AND a podcast recommendation! I'm in.

What's funny is that I've been watching it with the AC cranking a few feet from the TV, so I can barely hear the score! Or at least, I didn't notice it. But maybe I did and it added to the tension without my realizing it.
 

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Yeah, it's quite simply jawdropping. I don't think it's perfect, but the tension of, e.g., the roof scene from the last episode, along with the reserved horror (we need only glimpses of victims of radiation poisoning and piles of dead animals, and it's good the makers understand that), the eerie, dead settings, the acting, and the fidelity to the real life event are making this one of the most gripping historical dramas I've ever seen.
 

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Oh, awesome, a book AND a podcast recommendation! I'm in.

What's funny is that I've been watching it with the AC cranking a few feet from the TV, so I can barely hear the score! Or at least, I didn't notice it. But maybe I did and it added to the tension without my realizing it.

You probably weren't aware of it as an actual "score." It's captured the reactor environment so strongly and yet so subtly that it comes across more as ambient sound rather than musical composition. Apparently composer Hildur Guðnadóttir spent a fair amount of time in the Lithuanian nuclear plant so she could build the score from the sounds she heard and recorded there.

There's a sample of it here: Concrete Burying. And word is that Deutsche Grammaphon will release a soundtrack album - there's already a single track available for purchase from Amazon. I'm kind of excited about that.
 

angeliz2k

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mrsmig, you're probably right about me not really registering it as a score. But, e gads, that soundtrack seems distinctly un-relaxing! I mean, that sample is lovely, but there's still a lot of tension there. Not something I'd put on if I wanted to be in a happy mood.
 

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It would be writing music for me.

:evil
 

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I think it's fantastic. For all the reasons you guys have stated. And on top of that I find it watchable because despite the brutality and devastation and horrific politicking, I still see a triumph of the human spirit. Of human ingenuity. Of human sacrifice for the greater good. Despite the horror, knowing that it could have been so much worse and seeing how so many individuals worked so hard to make it less so keeps it from being just a show that utterly destroys my soul.
 

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As a Russian (moved away with my family when I was a kid) I'm glad everyone just speaks plain English. Hearing non-Russians play Russians that speak English with a Russian accent makes my brain go haywire ...

Anyways, great show, great writing, great everything. And it looks authentic, which for me personally is fantastic. In television, move often than not, foreign places always have this superficial feel. It looks like that place, but seen through the eyes of a foreigner who didn't do the research.

PS: I realize it's set in Ukraine but ... potato tomato.
 

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Comrade Dyatlov, who has led an otherwise blameless life...
 

telford

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Just finished the last episode. Wow. Can't add to what's been said. Brilliant.
 

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The trial episode was brilliant television. Saving the depiction of the actual accident for the last episode was smart, but they made even a scientist dryly talking about xenon poisoning and positive void coefficients unbearably tense, like the best TED talks. This series was marvellous.
 

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Ack. My free trial of HBO is up, so I'll have to wait to see the final episode until there's a free watchathon week, or maybe borrow someone's password or something.

I watched the final episode last night...I feel for you because it was good. I agree that it is probably one of the best historical dramas I've seen...
 

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I just found out that Vasily, the firefighter from the first few episodes, is played by Adam Nagaitis, who also played Hickey on The Terror. That is some range.
 

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There is a book of first-person interviews called Voices From Chernobyl, written by Russian journalist Svetlana Alexievich, for which she won the Nobel Prize in literature in 2015. I cannot help but believe that the book informed a lot of the "human" part of this series. The fireman's wife, and the story of the soldiers who had to deal with pets/livestock are straight from the book. I could only read one interview at a time, with a week to decompress, when I read the book, so I can't recommend it in the normal way. It's powerful, sad, terrible, and worth reading so the knowledge of what happened to people there isn't lost. But it's hard. The show is doing an amazing job of capturing all of that and more.

I bought a copy based on your mention of it here, and because I loved the HBO show and wanted to learn more.

Despite your warning, I was unprepared for what a gut-wrenching read it is, especially the stories of those who moved to Chernobyl after the reactor fire because sectarian violence drove them there for lack of any safer place to be post-Soviet breakup.

Better to risk cancer and radiation poisoning than be killed by people who were their neighbors? Humanity really sucks sometimes.