IMDB ratings are of pretty dubious quality. They also fall victim to a recency bias - looking at their Top 250 list, Avengers Endgame is currently listed as the number nine best film ever made, which... come on.
It might also be worth pointing out that the majority of IMDB raters are males in their 30's so it is going to be heavily biased towards what appeals to males in their 30's. I think there is a lot of overlap between what different genders and age groups enjoys still but it still shows a pretty clear bias. You can filter the ratings down by gender or age group to get a better impression.
I don't know if that is down to recency bias, but rather the sheer number of fans for that particular genre. There are not many movies in the top 50 you could reasonably make that same argument for.
Also, I'm not sure you could make that argument for IMDB's top 250 TV series [1], but maybe that's just my own preferences speaking.
Three of the top ten aired in 2019, and all ten aired this century. I think it's fair to say we are in a golden age of TV series, but it's also just that TV shows don't age as well as film, which causes a recency bias.
It's also currently second highest rated series on csfd (czech and slovak movie db) which makes it less likely that the ratings are gamed or otherwise dubious.
Incredibly dubious. I have found user ratings for things that draw 'passionate' fan bases (movies, video games, etc) to be nearly useless over the last 3 to 5 years. Review bombings are becoming all too common over issues that more often then not have nothing to do with the actual product.
Luckily, I haven't really seen this with books yet (at least on Goodreads), but I am sure it has just as much potential to be hit in a similar way.
Luckily I haven't had a bad experience yet. I've found some reviews to be a little more positive then I would expect, but I would take people being overly generous then the review cesspools I have stumbled upon on Steam or IMBD/Rotten Tomatoes.
There is also a...non-recency bias in other rankings like AFI, where movies from the 50s and 60s are way overrepresented in the standings. Was "some like it hot" really the funniest movie of all time?
I usually use http://themoviedb.org to have an at least slightly more reliable idea of how a film is - not perfect but I can usually get an idea if I compare the rating of the candidate movie against other films which I liked and disliked in the past.
P.S.: the guys of tmdb have (or at least they used to have) as well a nice API to download stuff (ratings, posters/images, etc... if I remember correctly when I programmed a simple media player looong time back).
It's less of a recency bias (the trend is mostly flat by year of movie release), but both ends of the spectrum are more extreme for movies in the last decade.
I think the ratings are clearly manipulated. All new releases somehow start with stellar ratings before sinking in after a few months.
That being said I was about to complain that Chernobyl didn't deal with the most interesting part, how the explosion happened in the first place, but the last episode did exactly that. I agree that it is an excellent mini-series.
Though the explantion in the tv show pretty much mirror the wikipedia article.
Personally, my "go to" list for movie rankings is http://www.phi-phenomenon.org/ which is a labor of love project attempting to generate a forced ranking of all-time best movies.
The main downside of it is that it discounts recent (past 5+ years) movies. This is partly due to the infrequent updates, and partly because films take a while to appear in the data sources the site uses for its statistical analysis.
(I am not affiliated with that site. I'm just a long-time, satisfied user of it)
The list seems to be a consensus popularity contest, right? The only top 50 movies from this century are LOTR films for example. While the 90s films, half are cult films that became massively hyped or Oscar films.
These are self-selected audience scores. No more dubious than a single critic review, just different.
Endgame is the final piece in a 22-film story arc. The people paying to watch it in the cinema, reviewing it are already fans before they've seen it. It won't be until home release where more moderate voices step in.
I'm not sure you can really level the same claims against Chernobyl though. These are people who had an HBO subscription, and that really only suggests they like Game of Thrones.
You can also argue these sorts of willing-audience reviews are actually a good thing, if you align with the reviewing audience. IMDb does make basic demographics available on their reviews.
I almost agree with you. But I think it was fair fear-mongering on both sides (the scientists vs the politicians). It really drove home that secrets and cover-ups were the real disaster. People were afraid to admit their failure. I like to think that today, with cameras and social media everywhere, secrets and cover-ups about a disaster like this would be even more impossible (it was impossible to cover up even then).
> For a million reasons, this was not an anti-nuclear polemic. It’s anti–Soviet government, and it is anti-lie, and it is pro–human being. But anyone who thinks the point of this is that nuclear power is bad, is just, they’ve just missed it.
Thank you for that quote. I was going to try and write something along those lines, but that seems like a better summary. Anti-nuclear energy simply wasn't part of the narrative. It only seems like that because the events of Chernobyl really happened.
They pointed out a few times that the only reason the Chernobyl catastrophe happened was because of all the corners that were cut and the lies that were told. Other nations with Nuclear programs weren't likely to have the same problem because they were more open.
> It’s the story of the Soviet Union, but the danger is you make the story about how the Soviets were a bunch of liars and it’s easy for America — and some Americans continue to do this, remarkably — to say, “See? Those Soviets ... they’re liars.” And it became clear to me that Soviets are just people, and we’re just people, and lying is not in the water over there. It’s something people do. And they do it here. The Soviet system is a warning: Don’t take it this far. Please, for the love of god, don’t take it this far.
I wouldn't say my take-away was that it was intended to be anti-nuclear, but with the need to move more towards nuclear now more than ever it felt poorly placed. That context makes sense though.
In fact I must say that seeing how wreckless the operators had to be to make this reactor fail despite the fact that it was an early, soviet design with many design flaws, if anything, makes me believe more in the stability of these reactors if handled properly.
How is showing the catastrophic consequences of nuclear power fear-mongering? I mean the stuff which is depicted in the series literally happened, and a lot of it / most of it actually exactly as depicted. How is that fear-mongering? It's the reality.
But whenever the topic of nuclear comes up here on HN, and there is only the slightest mention of the risks, there is always someone shouting about fear-mongering...
"In the first episode of “Chernobyl” the nuclear reactor explodes, blows the top off the building, and catches on fire. The plant workers vomit, their faces turn red, and several appear to die.
We see a plant worker in his twenties hold open a door to the reactor hall and various parts of his body start to bleed. He rescues a comrade with a red, blistered, and bloody face, and appears to leave him for dead in a hall. Later we see the man slumped over and smoking what appears to be his last cigarette.
Later, the plant manager who was in denial about the accident becomes violently ill after he learns the true scale of the disaster. As he leaves for the hospital, we see a fireman who is carrying a body on a stretcher collapse and drop the body.
I was left thinking that dozens of workers and firefighters were immediately killed, but according to the official United Nations report (p. 66) on the accident, just two workers, not dozens, or hundreds, were killed within a few hours of the explosion."
Even in the show most don't die immediately. Many of the workers are shown being interviewed about what happened before they die in a hospital very far from the reactor. Days/Weeks passed.
That, and besides, the number of deaths related to Chernobyl (or even the magnitude) is highly controversial. But even the "official" Soviet number of direct, short-term fatalities is not 2, but 31. And I would take that number with a big grain of salt, for the very same reasons depicted in the series.
Not sure this refutes anything, since the episode doesn't show anyone immediately dying from radiation sickness. They all died in the weeks following the explosion. Wikipedia has a list [1]. At least 10 plant workers who were present at the time of the explosion died in the first two weeks of May, 1986.
> "I was left thinking that dozens of workers and firefighters were immediately killed"
That's the main problem with this argument: they were "left with an impression" that just isn't supported by the actual episode. The episode actually undersells it: even though there were 2 (official) deaths, none are actually shown.
> [..] appears to leave him for dead in a hall. Later we see the man slumped over and smoking what appears to be his last cigarette.
So they notice they wrongly considered someone to be "left for dead", then immediately make the same mistake again?
> we see a fireman who is carrying a body on a stretcher collapse and drop the body.
Injured people just happen to be often carried on stretchers without being dead. Dropping off a stretcher is less common, but also not fatal.
Dozens of people suffered severe radiation burns, which would appear exactly as gruesome as despicted: "from 115 patients treated in Moscow, 30% had burns covering 10–50% of body surface, 11% were affected on 50–100% of skin"[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_burn#Nuclear_acciden...]
I like the series, but it is somewhat dramatized and technically incorrect in places; some people may understand the focus on drama as a statement against nuclear energy, which would be regrettable. I think the show says close to nothing new about the technology and its risks, the bad effects of radioactivity and bad design of RBMK are well known to people who study nuclear physics and medicine. The accident was terrible, but in terms of lives nothing like a big tsunami or largest chemical disasters. But it shows how bad our governments are; the show rightly exposes how the totalitarian political system was instrumental in the disaster and botched reaction to it: and things such as "state can admit no error or wrongdoing", "appearance of state success is more important than people lives" and "vital technological information should be classified as top secret even if it can save lives", all sound too familiar even today.
".... The lesson of Chernobyl isn't that modern nuclear power is dangerous. The lesson is that lying, arrogance and suppression of criticism is dangerous. The flaws that led to Chernobyl are the same flaws shown by climate change deniers today."
I was actually pleasantly surprised about how fairly this show portrayed nuclear energy.
Sure, it shows the scary side of nuclear energy and how badly things can go wrong. But it also highlights how many bad decisions led to this catastrophe and how many deaths could have been prevented if it hadn't been for the secrecy and lies of the Soviet system. It made me oddly reassured about the safeguards we have in place today.
> ... at a time when we need to change societal opinions on nuclear more than ever.
No, I cannot agree with this. As many others stated, the facts on this show was portrayed remarkably accurately.
The events that happend should be shown as close to as what really happened to honor those who died and to teach those who need to learn from history with the real truth.
Your particular political agendas and idealisms should not be used to nudge the story of what happend to change societal opinions. Misrepresentation of reality to change societal opinions is exactly why stuff went wrong in Chernobyl.
If we're going to be investing in nuclear, we need to be absolutely clear-headed, honest and scared. Nuclear oopsies will impact societies for thousands of years. Thousands.
Besides, think about this, if the predictions that organised human civilization will inevitably collapse in the next couple of decades is accurate, the LAST thing we need is more nuclear powerstations.
There are currently about 450+ reactors running worldwide - what happens when the societies that maintain them take a dip? What happens when even half of those go into meltdown?
Its good, but I think its easier to be good for 6 episodes than it is for multiple seasons. Even if you disregard that- Is it better than Band of Brothers?
Completely agree, but I also think many shows end up being significantly longer than they probably should be. If you have a gripping story that only fits in ~4 hours, don't make it longer than 4 hours. Trying to fit narratives to traditional series / film lengths often reduces overall quality.
Agreed. I really liked Chernobyl but I honestly thought Breaking Bad and the first four seasons of Game of Thrones were superior, in no small part because of the high excellence that’s extremely difficult to maintain beyond a few episodes. It’s also much harder to make character development feel earned in only a few episodes.
Eh, I'm not sure Band of Brothers holds up as well as you might think. It's really strong in episodes 2 through 6, where the core characters are all together from Normandy to Market Garden to Bastogne. But after that those core characters disperse, either by getting promoted or becoming casualties, and then from there the series just kind of fizzles out; for better or worse, in those early episodes Winters is the de facto protagonist, and once he departs the show never really manages to find another one.
The later sequel The Pacific suffered from the same problem of not having a stable, interesting point-of-view character for the audience to attach themselves to, only unlike Band which starts with one and then discards him The Pacific lacks one throughout.
Talking about HBO historical tv shows on the soviet union, one of their best production was Stalin (1992), with Robert Duvall impressive in Stalin. They did a series on historical figures in the 1990s. The one on the judge Falcone was also pretty good.
The show is great, and it reaching this level of notoriety is amazing. Yet, it just goes to show you how everything is marketing and timing. If this show isn't on HBO, and isn't following the exit of Game of Thrones does it even get noticed? For example, The Terror, which in my opinion is just as good as this show (and features a better performance by the same actor in Chernobyl) was not only ignored by viewers but by critics alike. TV Critics are, in my opinion, completely useless and only ever write articles about popular shows. Best of lists you usually see at the end of the year make me wonder if these people even watch the shows.
> If this show isn't on HBO, and isn't following the exit of Game of Thrones does it even get noticed?
Well, yes, because the article notes that it's most popular in Ireland. It was a co-production with a British company, so over there it has no connection to HBO at all.
> TV Critics are, in my opinion, completely useless and only ever write articles about popular shows.
Maybe TV critics giving positive reviews to a show helps make it popular?
After watching this show I realized a very deep appreciation for those doomed men who managed / cleaned up the accident. Most of them are dead. I consider them heroes. Very sad all around.
As a mid-level Chernobyl geek, I found this show generally underwhelming. I admit it may hold much more interest for those who are not yet familiar with the story. But I must say, there are so many things which could have been done spectacularly, and instead we got a very pedestrian TV affair, with ample use of disaster movie and horror movie cliches and tropes, and basic bitch cinematography. Chernobyl should deserve a more flavorful adaptation if anything does. I also hate the gray-blue color grading, it would have been far more interesting to portray Pripyat as the rather vivid and young city which it was, with warmer color tones and more humane elements, instead of defaulting to dumb USSR cliches.
I guess the explosion, we never see it. But I think it is right they didn't do it; the effect of not seeing it is so much more true to the events and how people perceived them; I think the scenes in the control room where the operators are battling with a lack of information were a master stroke. Much better effect than some generic cgi animation could have had.
We do see the explosion in episode 5, and in my opinion it's one of the low points of the limited series. IMO the generic CGI animation you feared is exactly how it comes across.
Just saw the final part, you're right they do show it. I think they did quite a good job with that, they use it to explain what happened and smartly avoid 'cinematic' scenes.
By "spectacular" I did not primarily mean visual effects, and I think the production value of effects in the series is perfectly okay, I instead meant effective dramatization. I've only seen up to episode 3 now, but I can elaborate a bit on perhaps my biggest specific complaint so far: basically, too much fallback on disaster movie tropes, too much screen time on languid dialogues instead of trying to show much more of the vast amount of documented fascinating stories and details. It should be less about pondering the gravity of the situation with pained expressions, or grave and silent meetings with Gorbachev reminiscent of Hollywood disaster movies; instead the reality of the first few days must have been an absolute frenzy of activity, with massive organizational and logistical challenges, redirecting kilotons of material and equipment and thousands of personnel from all across the USSR. Such challenges are merely mentioned in the episodes, but we get no subjective sense of it, there is no administrative frenzy around Legasov and Scherbina. I am reminded of the Shin Godzilla movie, which is admittedly not realistic overall, but the beginning of it had a spectacular rendition of governmental and military bureaucracy kicked into panicked activity. In comparison, the Chernobyl version is rather dull and stilted. A painful issue with mainstream TV is that there is a core assumption that the audience cares mostly about personal stories but not about technical, procedural and sociological topics, and I get the impression that an HBO show cannot fundamentally break out of this box. Hence, we don't get any information about how radiation actually works and the fundamental mechanisms of its dangers and mitigation, we instead get spooky bullshit about "trillions of bullets".
So, the biggest issue was pacing, script and focus. I could also talk about photography and cinematography, which I think has been fine so far; but I would have been happier with something more creative and adventurous. I've been drawn to the topic of Chernobyl because it evokes a singular feeling of dread and awe. I'm not sure how to best evoke dread and awe; the Chernobyl TV version seemed to have succeeded to some extent, but I think that it only utilized a tiny and conventional sliver of the visual and directorial possibilities.
Having seen episode 4-5 now, I think the last episode was pretty good, and the technical breakdown was actually great.
However, episode 4 also wasted an unacceptable amount of time; the intro with the old lady and the pet hunters' parts were heavy-handed fillers, and the time should have been much better spent on expanding more on the different operations (mentioned in a pitiful few sentences in the beginning of ep 4!) and also the biorobots.
One part of my general feelings is summarized well by this article: https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/what-hbos-cher.... This is basically about grafting a western-style disaster movie narrative onto the story. The other part of my feelings is that they simply did not make good use of the runtime; they wasted most runtime on lackluster invented dialogues.
Thanks, that is a very strong critique of the show, there is much to agree with there. My suspicion was confirmed: the heroic characters did act a little too western-way and the true nature of the society dynamics wasn't captured as well as the visuals. I think it is hard for a westerner to understand the soviet system and people there and then, so I do not take it too hard on the authors.
I understand and partly agree. The geeky stuff was very limited and the narrative and exposition was somewhat dramatized. I am also not sure if the real characters really acted towards the state in such a brave unassailable way as depicted... Still I think the show adopts a valid viewpoint and gives a powerful and needed message about a corrupt totalitarian system. But you are right that telling the story from the point of view of organizational challenges or from a point of view of a real person putting their life in danger in taking part in the effort would be very interesting too. There are some great documents on youtube from these different points of view, e.g. the story told by Starodumov and Bordakov: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FfDa8tR25dk
Agreed on the colors, the scenes shown focused a little but too much on the dark and grim, especially when you compare to the real footage and photographs of Pripyat from the time. It was one of the most modern and likeable cities back then. They could have shown at least few minutes of normal life just before the disaster.
Just saw the final part, they do show a little of normal life in the first minutes, props to the authors. They did such a great job with so many aspects, definitely a work of heart for many of them.
Whenever any market is heavily exploited, what once could have been "a more flavorful" creation turns into "a very pedestrian" product, systematically. Time and money go more into increasing the product's ability to be sold than its artistic value, and by an ever-increasing wide margin.
Perhaps the show is more of a hit with soviet geeks than Chernobyl geeks. I was thoroughly impressed with the level of detail in set dressing and by the costume department. This individual does a much better job articulating the period accuracy than I could[1].
The color correction reminds me of the actual film used at the time. They watched a lot of soviet movies and even adapted some cameraman angles from those.
Not sure if this is worth much, but I saw this earlier today and thought I'd leave it here. It's just an observation from a reddit user: "Cinematographer Jakob Ihre deliberately over-exposed all outdoor scenes to mimic the way the radiation during the Chernobyl disaster bleached out and destroyed the film taken at the time." [0]
We lived close enough to Chernobyl that if the winds blew a different way we would have been seriously affected by it. And I remember when it happened. The announcement on evening news (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuWIIiTLbFM). My dad saying "if that's what they admit to on the news, the situation is many times worse" and how we should all be very worried.
Then the refugees coming to our city, and how the locals had this irrational fear and hate toward them, thinking they were "radioactive" or brought "bad luck". The promises of new apartments for the liquidators, and how some, of course, never lived long enough to enjoy them.
Anyway, in the show, I think, they went above and beyond to make it authentic. Anything from the smallest details like the decor, clothes, the buildings, the things they say, the mannerisms, all of that. The lack of "Russian" accents, a common criticism I heard, never bothered me. Even the fictitious character of Ulana Khomyuk was very representative of what a woman scientist might have looked or behaved like. She reminded me of my chemistry teacher from high school.
I agree about how good it is - I don't think anything on TV has given me the same sense of existential dread since I watched Threads on the BBC when I was a teenager.
Yeah, the winds blew in our direction. Shortly after, my family moved to Minsk,
Later on, I had military training in radiation protection in post-Chernobyl Belarus, read the transcripts of Legasov's tapes and IAEA reports on Chernobyl.
Chernobyl shadowed my life, but things turned out to be mostly OK.
Back to the mini-series, even the faithful repoduction of the epoch is sometimes dumb. Notice the crystal clock on Gorbatchev's table. I had one like that at home, but I am pretty sure that clock would not sit on Gorbatchev's table. It's something people had at home, not in institutions.
The sequence of events is roughly similar to what actually happened, but content is unnecessarily worse than the reality. For instance, the three divers that went through radiactive waters survied, one died many years later of a heart attack, one is retired and the third one is a director at the Energy and Coal Mining Ministry of Ukraine.
Did you watch the end of the show? They explicitly mention that even though legends said the divers died of radiation, they didn’t, and two are still alive
There is endless rambling about the failure of the apparatchiks to communicate the shortcomings of the scram system for political, economical and technical reasons, which culminates in stating at the end that the emergency stop can change to an ignition switch for a bomb under special circumstances.
I can't find anything else backing up Konstantin Checherov's claims. It seems like this is very much just his opinion, and they don't seem to add up: https://sputniknews.com/analysis/2006053048810128/
walks with him through the ruin several times, and compares several videos with the floor plan, together with other people, and they all come to the conclusion that the official story makes no sense, for several reasons.
Anyways, wasn't the conclusion of the last episode that it was all about saving face? Who is to say it would be any different now? Especially if there are BILLIONS to have?
Hm?
Really the only thing I think could have better is had it been in Russian. I mostly got used to it, but it would have felt better listening to Russian and reading subtitles (IMO).
89 comments
[ 4.1 ms ] story [ 162 ms ] threadIMDB ratings are of pretty dubious quality. They also fall victim to a recency bias - looking at their Top 250 list, Avengers Endgame is currently listed as the number nine best film ever made, which... come on.
[1] https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-story-behind-the-wo...
[2] https://www.imdb.com/title/tt2574698/ratings
Also, I'm not sure you could make that argument for IMDB's top 250 TV series [1], but maybe that's just my own preferences speaking.
[1] https://www.imdb.com/chart/toptv/
Luckily, I haven't really seen this with books yet (at least on Goodreads), but I am sure it has just as much potential to be hit in a similar way.
Yes Socrates, let's consult the mob.
I usually use http://themoviedb.org to have an at least slightly more reliable idea of how a film is - not perfect but I can usually get an idea if I compare the rating of the candidate movie against other films which I liked and disliked in the past.
P.S.: the guys of tmdb have (or at least they used to have) as well a nice API to download stuff (ratings, posters/images, etc... if I remember correctly when I programmed a simple media player looong time back).
Edit - link to API docs: https://developers.themoviedb.org/3/getting-started/introduc...
It's less of a recency bias (the trend is mostly flat by year of movie release), but both ends of the spectrum are more extreme for movies in the last decade.
https://datasets.imdbws.com/
That being said I was about to complain that Chernobyl didn't deal with the most interesting part, how the explosion happened in the first place, but the last episode did exactly that. I agree that it is an excellent mini-series.
Though the explantion in the tv show pretty much mirror the wikipedia article.
The main downside of it is that it discounts recent (past 5+ years) movies. This is partly due to the infrequent updates, and partly because films take a while to appear in the data sources the site uses for its statistical analysis.
(I am not affiliated with that site. I'm just a long-time, satisfied user of it)
Endgame is the final piece in a 22-film story arc. The people paying to watch it in the cinema, reviewing it are already fans before they've seen it. It won't be until home release where more moderate voices step in.
I'm not sure you can really level the same claims against Chernobyl though. These are people who had an HBO subscription, and that really only suggests they like Game of Thrones.
You can also argue these sorts of willing-audience reviews are actually a good thing, if you align with the reviewing audience. IMDb does make basic demographics available on their reviews.
EDIT* What I mean by this is that the facts were dramatized for effect, at a time when we need to change societal opinions on nuclear more than ever.
> For a million reasons, this was not an anti-nuclear polemic. It’s anti–Soviet government, and it is anti-lie, and it is pro–human being. But anyone who thinks the point of this is that nuclear power is bad, is just, they’ve just missed it.
They pointed out a few times that the only reason the Chernobyl catastrophe happened was because of all the corners that were cut and the lies that were told. Other nations with Nuclear programs weren't likely to have the same problem because they were more open.
> It’s the story of the Soviet Union, but the danger is you make the story about how the Soviets were a bunch of liars and it’s easy for America — and some Americans continue to do this, remarkably — to say, “See? Those Soviets ... they’re liars.” And it became clear to me that Soviets are just people, and we’re just people, and lying is not in the water over there. It’s something people do. And they do it here. The Soviet system is a warning: Don’t take it this far. Please, for the love of god, don’t take it this far.
But whenever the topic of nuclear comes up here on HN, and there is only the slightest mention of the risks, there is always someone shouting about fear-mongering...
"In the first episode of “Chernobyl” the nuclear reactor explodes, blows the top off the building, and catches on fire. The plant workers vomit, their faces turn red, and several appear to die.
We see a plant worker in his twenties hold open a door to the reactor hall and various parts of his body start to bleed. He rescues a comrade with a red, blistered, and bloody face, and appears to leave him for dead in a hall. Later we see the man slumped over and smoking what appears to be his last cigarette.
Later, the plant manager who was in denial about the accident becomes violently ill after he learns the true scale of the disaster. As he leaves for the hospital, we see a fireman who is carrying a body on a stretcher collapse and drop the body.
I was left thinking that dozens of workers and firefighters were immediately killed, but according to the official United Nations report (p. 66) on the accident, just two workers, not dozens, or hundreds, were killed within a few hours of the explosion."
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di...
That's the main problem with this argument: they were "left with an impression" that just isn't supported by the actual episode. The episode actually undersells it: even though there were 2 (official) deaths, none are actually shown.
> [..] appears to leave him for dead in a hall. Later we see the man slumped over and smoking what appears to be his last cigarette.
So they notice they wrongly considered someone to be "left for dead", then immediately make the same mistake again?
> we see a fireman who is carrying a body on a stretcher collapse and drop the body.
Injured people just happen to be often carried on stretchers without being dead. Dropping off a stretcher is less common, but also not fatal.
Everything that was shown quite plausibly happened. Here's a list that's more current than the 1988 UN report: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Deaths_due_to_the_Chernobyl_di...
Dozens of people suffered severe radiation burns, which would appear exactly as gruesome as despicted: "from 115 patients treated in Moscow, 30% had burns covering 10–50% of body surface, 11% were affected on 50–100% of skin"[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Radiation_burn#Nuclear_acciden...]
".... The lesson of Chernobyl isn't that modern nuclear power is dangerous. The lesson is that lying, arrogance and suppression of criticism is dangerous. The flaws that led to Chernobyl are the same flaws shown by climate change deniers today."
Sure, it shows the scary side of nuclear energy and how badly things can go wrong. But it also highlights how many bad decisions led to this catastrophe and how many deaths could have been prevented if it hadn't been for the secrecy and lies of the Soviet system. It made me oddly reassured about the safeguards we have in place today.
No, I cannot agree with this. As many others stated, the facts on this show was portrayed remarkably accurately.
The events that happend should be shown as close to as what really happened to honor those who died and to teach those who need to learn from history with the real truth.
Your particular political agendas and idealisms should not be used to nudge the story of what happend to change societal opinions. Misrepresentation of reality to change societal opinions is exactly why stuff went wrong in Chernobyl.
If we're going to be investing in nuclear, we need to be absolutely clear-headed, honest and scared. Nuclear oopsies will impact societies for thousands of years. Thousands.
Besides, think about this, if the predictions that organised human civilization will inevitably collapse in the next couple of decades is accurate, the LAST thing we need is more nuclear powerstations.
There are currently about 450+ reactors running worldwide - what happens when the societies that maintain them take a dip? What happens when even half of those go into meltdown?
https://www.rexweyler.ca/ecologue/2017/9/11/nuclear-power-an...
The later sequel The Pacific suffered from the same problem of not having a stable, interesting point-of-view character for the audience to attach themselves to, only unlike Band which starts with one and then discards him The Pacific lacks one throughout.
One of the underlying points of the series was that all of them are core characters. Looking for protagonists in war is glorifying it.
Well, yes, because the article notes that it's most popular in Ireland. It was a co-production with a British company, so over there it has no connection to HBO at all.
> TV Critics are, in my opinion, completely useless and only ever write articles about popular shows.
Maybe TV critics giving positive reviews to a show helps make it popular?
So, the biggest issue was pacing, script and focus. I could also talk about photography and cinematography, which I think has been fine so far; but I would have been happier with something more creative and adventurous. I've been drawn to the topic of Chernobyl because it evokes a singular feeling of dread and awe. I'm not sure how to best evoke dread and awe; the Chernobyl TV version seemed to have succeeded to some extent, but I think that it only utilized a tiny and conventional sliver of the visual and directorial possibilities.
However, episode 4 also wasted an unacceptable amount of time; the intro with the old lady and the pet hunters' parts were heavy-handed fillers, and the time should have been much better spent on expanding more on the different operations (mentioned in a pitiful few sentences in the beginning of ep 4!) and also the biorobots.
One part of my general feelings is summarized well by this article: https://www.newyorker.com/news/our-columnists/what-hbos-cher.... This is basically about grafting a western-style disaster movie narrative onto the story. The other part of my feelings is that they simply did not make good use of the runtime; they wasted most runtime on lackluster invented dialogues.
[1]https://twitter.com/SlavaMalamud/status/1132029943297265664
[0]: https://www.reddit.com/r/TVDetails/comments/bz28hw/cinematog...
Disclaimer: I miss the point a lot.
We lived close enough to Chernobyl that if the winds blew a different way we would have been seriously affected by it. And I remember when it happened. The announcement on evening news (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuWIIiTLbFM). My dad saying "if that's what they admit to on the news, the situation is many times worse" and how we should all be very worried.
Then the refugees coming to our city, and how the locals had this irrational fear and hate toward them, thinking they were "radioactive" or brought "bad luck". The promises of new apartments for the liquidators, and how some, of course, never lived long enough to enjoy them.
Anyway, in the show, I think, they went above and beyond to make it authentic. Anything from the smallest details like the decor, clothes, the buildings, the things they say, the mannerisms, all of that. The lack of "Russian" accents, a common criticism I heard, never bothered me. Even the fictitious character of Ulana Khomyuk was very representative of what a woman scientist might have looked or behaved like. She reminded me of my chemistry teacher from high school.
Later on, I had military training in radiation protection in post-Chernobyl Belarus, read the transcripts of Legasov's tapes and IAEA reports on Chernobyl.
Chernobyl shadowed my life, but things turned out to be mostly OK.
Back to the mini-series, even the faithful repoduction of the epoch is sometimes dumb. Notice the crystal clock on Gorbatchev's table. I had one like that at home, but I am pretty sure that clock would not sit on Gorbatchev's table. It's something people had at home, not in institutions.
The sequence of events is roughly similar to what actually happened, but content is unnecessarily worse than the reality. For instance, the three divers that went through radiactive waters survied, one died many years later of a heart attack, one is retired and the third one is a director at the Energy and Coal Mining Ministry of Ukraine.
Also imdb doesn't really hold reliable statistics as top rated shows are often review bombed
https://www.neimagazine.com/features/featurea-different-view...
There is endless rambling about the failure of the apparatchiks to communicate the shortcomings of the scram system for political, economical and technical reasons, which culminates in stating at the end that the emergency stop can change to an ignition switch for a bomb under special circumstances.
"Weil nicht sein kann was nicht sein darf!"
"And he comes to the conclusion: His mishap was an illusion, for, he reasons pointedly, that which must not, can not be!" (cited from https://www.proz.com/kudoz/german-to-english/business-commer... )
Yet, regarding the different view of Konstantin Checherov they are making the same error.
Guilty of falsifying history as usual.
Mockumentary...
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sebastian_Pflugbeil
walks with him through the ruin several times, and compares several videos with the floor plan, together with other people, and they all come to the conclusion that the official story makes no sense, for several reasons.
Anyways, wasn't the conclusion of the last episode that it was all about saving face? Who is to say it would be any different now? Especially if there are BILLIONS to have? Hm?
https://www.neimagazine.com/features/featurereinterpreting-c...
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00295450.2017.1...