Television Trailer for HBO's "Chernobyl" miniseries, update: multiple very positive reviews

[CayceG]

11 minutes ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

So as someone who probably has a decent knowledge of the event, how much does the show embellish? 

 

Like, I know that Emily Watson's character isn't based on a real person, but more there to represent the many scientists who were involved with this.

 

The show has so far embellished almost nothing aside from timeline, some minor details of how things come together, and the compression of real life people into singular characters. 

 

I will say, though, Legasov was a true Party man. He was a devout communist and his actions and frustrations in Episode 3 do not fit his character. But I understand why they had to make that decision with Shcherbina being his opposite number. 

Another thing is that Legasov requests all the liquid nitrogen in the USSR to cool the reactor. In reality, it was Bryukhanov who was told to acquire it, or else he'd be shot. But the sidelining of Bryukhanov and Fomin after Legasov shows up serves as a good narrative choice, and an illustration of how quickly they WERE sidelined once it became clear they this was basically their doing. 

[CayceG]

16 minutes ago, JPDunks4 said:

I’ve been blown away by this show.  I never knew any of the details of Chernobyl so this series is both eye opening and devastating to watch.  

 

Seeing the scenes of the abandoned apartment buildings reminded me of the Sniper level in CoD4.  

 

 

 

Like I may have said before, I knew the ins and outs of the disaster. The faulty design, the things that happened that night, the devastating effect it had... But I didn't know names. I didn't know stories. Seeing it happen TO these people is another level entirely. And seeing the physical effects of the disaster is so brutal. 

 

And there's even more to come. 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

13 minutes ago, CayceG said:

 

The show has so far embellished almost nothing aside from timeline, some minor details of how things come together, and the compression of real life people into singular characters. 

 

I will say, though, Legasov was a true Party man. He was a devout communist and his actions and frustrations in Episode 3 do not fit his character. But I understand why they had to make that decision with Shcherbina being his opposite number. 

Another thing is that Legasov requests all the liquid nitrogen in the USSR to cool the reactor. In reality, it was Bryukhanov who was told to acquire it, or else he'd be shot. But the sidelining of Bryukhanov and Fomin after Legasov shows up serves as a good narrative choice, and an illustration of how quickly they WERE sidelined once it became clear they this was basically their doing. 

Thanks. I've heard that the idea that the water in the tanks posed a risk for a massive explosion devastating the country was really a bunch of hokey pushed by one disgraced scientist. 

 

I'm reading so I can learn more, but sometimes an immediate answer is nice.  

[Bloodporne]

I'm not sure this has ever happened to me but I'm actually feeling apprehensive about watching this show. I've been meaning to a few nights in a row night and I keep backing away from the play button like a scared kid. 

 

The whole Cold War nuclear fear of my childhood must've really done a number on me, who knew!

[CayceG]

7 minutes ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

Thanks. I've heard that the idea that the water in the tanks posed a risk for a massive explosion devastating the country was really a bunch of hokey pushed by one disgraced scientist. 

 

I'm reading so I can learn more, but sometimes an immediate answer is nice.  

 

Well, the water wouldn't have flattened the land from Kyiv to Minsk. But it would have caused an explosion that would have likely destroyed Reactor 3 and caused a way worse radiation release. 

 

 

5 minutes ago, Bloodporne said:

I'm not sure this has ever happened to me but I'm actually feeling apprehensive about watching this show. I've been meaning to a few nights in a row night and I keep backing away from the play button like a scared kid. 

 

The whole Cold War nuclear fear of my childhood must've really done a number on me, who knew!

 

It's really affecting me. Not from a "we're all going to die" standpoint. This isn't anything that could happen today in the same way to the same effects. 

But the atmosphere of the show is soooo frickin good. 

[TheGreatGamble]

42 minutes ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

Thanks. I've heard that the idea that the water in the tanks posed a risk for a massive explosion devastating the country was really a bunch of hokey pushed by one disgraced scientist. 

 

I'm reading so I can learn more, but sometimes an immediate answer is nice.  

As far as I understand, it really would have made large sections of Europe uninhabitable due to radiation fallout, and mostly everyone in Ukraine would have been as good as dead.

 

but like you, I’ve been reading more to get the full account 

[TheGreatGamble]

41 minutes ago, Bloodporne said:

I'm not sure this has ever happened to me but I'm actually feeling apprehensive about watching this show. I've been meaning to a few nights in a row night and I keep backing away from the play button like a scared kid. 

 

The whole Cold War nuclear fear of my childhood must've really done a number on me, who knew!

Where did you grow up?

[Bloodporne]

18 hours ago, TheGreatGamble said:

Where did you grow up?

I'm originally East German. Then West when the wall fell (I was born in '83), then emigrated to NYC a bit later when my mother married a GI.

 

My family history is complicated though, we're originally farmers from nowadays-Wroclaw, Poland before WWII. So Breslau in Silesia back then.

[johnny]

49 minutes ago, Bloodporne said:

I'm originally East German. Then West when the wall fell (I was born in '83), then emigrated to NYC a bit later when my mother married a GI.

 

My family history is complicated though, we're originally farmers from nowadays-Wroclaw, Poland before WWII. So Breslau in Silesia back then.

A Slav you say? @SFLUFAN

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

3 minutes ago, johnny said:

A Slav you say? @SFLUFAN

No, that part of Poland was largely ethnically German.

[Bloodporne]

14 minutes ago, johnny said:

A Slav you say? @SFLUFAN

 

10 minutes ago, SFLUFAN said:

No, that part of Poland was largely ethnically German.

What he said, yes. I do however unapologetically wear tracksuits with Adidas sandals and socks so I'm an honorary Slav. 

 

According to ourselves, we're simply Silesian. 

[TheGreatGamble]

On 5/22/2019 at 11:43 AM, Bloodporne said:

I'm originally East German. Then West when the wall fell (I was born in '83), then emigrated to NYC a bit later when my mother married a GI.

 

My family history is complicated though, we're originally farmers from nowadays-Wroclaw, Poland before WWII. So Breslau in Silesia back then.

Damn, growing up with fears of nuclear war/fallout must be terrifying.

[CayceG]

This photo was taken hours after the accident by the power plant's photographer:

 

 

 

This show got it 100% right. 

 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

Reading this book and watching the show at the same time...man, it's intense. 

[osxmatt]

This is one of the most incredible TV shows I've seen. The podcast is incredible.

 

I'm completely engrossed.

[CitizenVectron]

I will only echo what others have said—the show is incredible. Sad that there are only two episodes left.

[TheGreatGamble]

It’s quite frankly the most memorable mini series I can think of.

[johnny]

poor puppies 

[CayceG]

Aaaaaaand, Craig Mazin continues to find new and different ways to absolutely fuck me up week after week. 

 

But, there's good news:

 

 

 

 

 

Each week, I've been dreading whatever comes next. And each week my fear is exceeded as the terror is laid bare. And each week, the terror is different. This above tweet was fucking merciful. 

I'm legitimately excited again to see how the accident unfolded, and see what happens during the trial. 

 

Gonna hug my pup tight tonight.

 

[CastlevaniaNut18]

Tonight is a pretty quiet night at work, I'm kinda debating on watching this on my phone or just waiting til Wednesday when I'm off to watch it. 

 

Hmmm. 

[osxmatt]

What an absolutely brutal episode.

[CayceG]

Also, I'll say that the old woman's speech in the opening of tonight's episode had me near tears. The history of a nation's wounds told by one who experienced it. Extremely powerful.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

Yep, excellent episode. 

 

I'm ready to see it unfold next week. 

[TwinIon]

I watched the first three episodes, and I've been quite impressed by the show so far. The production design and VFX guys have done an amazing job, and I think the acting overall has been superb. I'll be very interested in seeing where the show diverges from the truth.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

1 hour ago, TwinIon said:

I watched the first three episodes, and I've been quite impressed by the show so far. The production design and VFX guys have done an amazing job, and I think the acting overall has been superb. I'll be very interested in seeing where the show diverges from the truth.

The podcast is an excellent reference because the show's creator discusses a lot of differences between the show and history. 

 

It's mostly accurate from what I've read thus far, but some timelines are a bit altered and some characters combined for the sake of being able to condense it for the miniseries. 

 

Also, I highly recommend Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham. It's an excellent read. 

[SoberChef]

Watched the prior 4 episodes in the last 2 nights and FUCK ME it is a hard watch at times. I actually had to fast forward through the puppy scene, a bridge too far that. The thing is, my mind hasn't been able to turn off thinking about a great many things related to the Cold War, the fall of the USSR, how this played into that, the gravitas of the whole situation as I was only 5 or 6 at the time it happened and how in a way I view the Russian people (at least of that time and era) in a different light which this show has done a great service to.

 

Absolutely brutal to be sure, that earlier tweet about the final episode being a mercy to someone who read it, I totally second that! I cannot wait to get off of work Monday night to watch this at home instead of on a monitor at work. Phenomenal work, amazing acting by so many, and the accuracy is both stunning and downright abhorrent in that so many of these things happened to so many people, much of the effects still being felt to this day and for generations yet to come.

[CayceG]

A journalist showed his dad the Chernobyl miniseries. His dad revealed that he was actually one of the liquidators:

 

https://meduza.io/en/feature/2019/05/30/i-was-there-and-i-don-t-want-to-watch-this-anymore

 

Quote

My stepfather, retired Lieutenant Colonel Vladimir Veytsman, lives in New York State and is always watching Pervyi Kanal, so I just wanted him to see something decent for a change. So I told him, here’s a show with Russian dubbing. Look at the Soviet machinery here. I wanted to know how well they nailed the military uniforms, and he was an expert on this, after all. And suddenly my stepfather tells me: I was there, and I don’t want to watch this anymore. I was blown away, because he’s not the secretive type. He’s talked about his service and how he served in the Far Eastern Military District, but he’d never said a word about this before.

 

It turns out that they called him up in May 1986, two or three weeks after the explosion, and put him on alert. He says he didn’t believe it at first, thinking there’d been some mistake. They told him: rally all the chemical-warfare troops and move out to the Kyiv region. And so he brought a detachment of liquidators there, to Pripyat, from Moldova. And since he was from the senior officer personnel (his rank was captain but his command was an artillery battalion, which was normally given to a major), they made him deputy district supervisor.

 

This was May, when the evacuation of villages around Pripyat was underway. They made him responsible for the evacuation, and he monitored the provision of buses and caught marauders. There was a lot of marauding there: everyone would be gone from one village, but not yet from the neighboring settlement, and people just came over to the empty side and took whatever they liked. He says they logged all the soldiers’ radiation exposure as 25 rem [0.25 Sievert], without even looking at the dosimeters. As he later learned, this was just the maximum dose [permitted on assignment], and nobody knows what their real exposure was. If you exceeded the maximum dose, you couldn’t be sent back, and they needed people.

 

[TwinIon]

16 hours ago, CastlevaniaNut18 said:

The podcast is an excellent reference because the show's creator discusses a lot of differences between the show and history. 

 

It's mostly accurate from what I've read thus far, but some timelines are a bit altered and some characters combined for the sake of being able to condense it for the miniseries. 

 

Also, I highly recommend Midnight in Chernobyl by Adam Higginbotham. It's an excellent read. 

Thanks for the rec. I started listening to the podcast, and I appreciate hearing the creator talk about what was accurate and what wasn't, and then also being able to provide reasoning and context to those decisions. 

[CitizenVectron]

The attention to detail is out of this world, in terms of making it look like Ukraine.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

Just now, CitizenVectron said:

The attention to detail is out of this world, in terms of making it look like Ukraine.

I'm fairly certain that the differences between Lithuania (where it was filmed) and Ukraine are relatively marginal

[CitizenVectron]

No one does hardship and stoicism like eastern Europe. The British think that they have the whole "stiff upper lip" thing down, but they are children compared to the Slavic people. Now to be fair, eastern Europe has brought almost all of it on themselves, politically through the ages...but I don't think there is another current culture that comes close to being as stoic, or as good at rolling with the punches. Whereas people in the west think of life as something that should be happy (and feel entitled to it), people in the Slavic countries see life as a series of struggles until you die. Their version is closer to the truth than ours.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

OLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOLOL

[TwinIon]

I've caught up and I've been listening to the podcast, and this show just keeps taking up more and more headspace. There are just so many extraordinary and terrifying moments. They play it all so straight without unnecessarily emphasizing the melodrama. It's an amazing show.

[Commissar SFLUFAN]

 

I am utterly convinced that the response to this event could have only been accomplished in a state of the type of the Soviet Union.  I have severe doubts that a "Western liberal democracy" would've been able to cut it.

[CastlevaniaNut18]

Only the Soviets would have been willing to make those kinds of sacrifices. It reminded me of how they fought in WWII. I'm also pretty sure Mazin discussed that some in the podcast.