HBO’s original haunting thriller series is a new, certified disaster
By Robert Scucci | Published: 2025-10-23 17:32:00 | Source: GIANT FREAKIN ROBOT
Written by Robert Scocchi | Published
Have you ever wondered what happens when a totalitarian government obsessed with reputation management, cost-cutting, and exploitation of its own people has to confront an unprecedented man-made disaster the likes of which humanity has never seen before? You get Chernobylthe real-life nuclear disaster that occurred in 1986, and the 2019 HBO miniseries streaming on Max based on the perfect storm of incompetence and accidents that we hope will never happen again in our lifetimes.
Starting with suicide and somehow it gets worse with each passing sequence, Chernobyl It is a terrifying and startlingly realistic depiction of what happened when the Soviet Union undermined its own facade of prosperity and nationalism through neglect at every bureaucratic level.
He starts suicidal and gets worse
Chernobyl The film begins two years and one day after the disaster, focusing on Valery Legasov (Jared Harris), deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute. After recording his findings into a tape recorder and leaving food for his cat, he places a rope around his neck and kicks the chair out from under him. For two years, he carried the weight of the truth, which was systematically erased when he tried to announce his findings on nuclear fusion.
After the worst opening imaginable, we are transported to the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, moments after the explosion has already occurred. Working alongside Olana Khomyuk (Emily Watson), government officials, and the surviving factory workers, there are two problems that need to be solved: containing the collapse in real time and finding out exactly what went wrong.
Under the supervision of Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård), Valery is told to never question the state and to be careful in how he communicates his findings to those in power, no matter how important those findings may be. Through the investigation, we learned that cost-cutting measures, inexperienced engineers, and impossible training deadlines created a perfect storm of devastation, wiping out entire communities and claiming far more lives than officials acknowledged. The Soviet government’s official death toll is 31. The true number may never be known.
Those who tell the truth never need to remember what they say
As grim as the events depicted in Chernobyl There is a strange beauty in its horror that deserves to be appreciated. One of the most surprising things is how miners and first responders put their lives on the line, first out of ignorance, then out of conviction once they understood what was at stake. More importantly, we see what happens when a government built on propaganda and control collapses under its own weight.
There is one line in Chernobyl Which captures the entire series. After another failed attempt to extinguish the fire, the question becomes what went wrong (again). Reviewing the communications shared with other countries providing aid, it appears that the Soviet Union “gave them a propaganda number” regarding how bad things actually were, meaning “it will never work.” The truth was never intended to be part of the solution if lying meant saving face on a global level.
Truth is life
When radiation-infected wild animals are collected and killed, and the full extent of the repercussions are assessed, Chernobyl Never one to hesitate to show what happens when lies are sold as truth, when evacuations are delayed for the sake of optics, and when citizens pay the price for their government’s pride.
Even the setting feels like a metaphor. Brutalist buildings, once built to symbolize efficiency, are now buried under ash and debris. The only remaining competence is the state’s ability and willingness to hide the damage rather than repair it.
A tough hour for all the right reasons, Chernobyl It is a terrifying look at one of the darkest chapters in modern history, and a cautionary tale about what happens when the best interests of humanity are treated as an afterthought in the pursuit of power.
Chernobyl It is an HBO original series, available for streaming on Max.
(tags for translation) Chernobyl
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