“Chernobyl” is one of the best series of 2019. He has won as many as 36 industry awards, including two Golden Globes and ten Emmy Awards. The miniseries will be available to watch on TVN. The first of five episodes on Sunday, January 7, at 20.
The British-American miniseries presents a fictionalized story of the explosion at the Chernobyl power plant. The production is partly based on the book “The Scream of Chernobyl” by Sviatlana Alexievich (a series of interviews that the Nobel Prize winner conducted with witnesses and victims of the disaster).
READ ALSO: He eliminated the effects of the Chernobyl disaster. It tells you where the mistake was made
“Chernobyl”HBO Max
“Chernobyl” – what is the series about?
April 26, 1986 at the Chernobyl nuclear power plant Ukraine, in the territory of the then USSR, there was a huge explosion. The radioactive cloud released during the explosion caused radioactive contamination in the area Belarus, Russia, Ukraine and spread throughout Europe, including Poland, Scandinavia, Central and Western Europe. In the series, we watch the events from the moment preceding the morning explosion until the moment when those responsible for the disaster are brought to justice.
The main roles are played by Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård and Emily Watson. Jared Harris plays Valery Legasov, a Soviet nuclear physicist who was a member of the commission investigating the causes of the accident. Stellan Skarsgård plays Deputy Chairman of the Council of Ministers of the USSR Boris Shcherbina, who, on behalf of the Kremlin, chaired the work of the government commission for Chernobyl in the first hours after the accident. Emily Watson will play the role of Ulana Khomyuk, a Soviet nuclear physicist who wants to find out the real causes of the reactor explosion. Khomyuk is a fictional character – he connects several scientists explaining the causes of the disaster, although it is not known whether there were women among them.
Producer about “Chernobyl”
The series is directed by Johan Renck, produced and written by Craig Mazin (“The Hangover 3”, “The Last of Us”). The latter was truly obsessed with the Chernobyl disaster for a long time. – I was 15 when the explosion happened, so it didn’t concern me much for most of my life. But when, years later, I started reading what really happened there, I was shocked. It was like a war that no one talked about, and then it turned out that there were stories. Only a few have heard them. This thought completely took over me, Mazin told Vice. He read documents, scientific studies and articles. Finally, he came across Alexievich’s book “Chernobyl Prayer” (published in Poland as “The Scream of Chernobyl”). This is where the story of firefighter Vasily Ignatenko and his wife Lyudmila comes from. Mazin was very keen not only to tell the story of the disaster, but also to recreate the details as faithfully as possible. Set designer Luke Hill copied Soviet paneling, wallpaper, glasses, children’s school bags and firefighters’ uniforms. “I wanted to avoid comments like: this is some sick American idea of what life was like in the Soviet Union,” Mazin explained in an interview for Vice.
Main photo source: HBO Max