Chernobyl (miniseries)

[Trebla]

22 hours ago, The Monkey said:

Stellar ending to a superb series. My one and only criticism was that the guy who directed the test that caused the disaster (can't recall the name) was a bit over-the-top in his nastiness. Maybe the sources confirm he was an asshole, but it would've been interesting to see some more nuances to his character.

Dyatlov. From what I read, he was really that bad. He really did threaten everyone in the control room that night and to his dying day he never took responsibility for his actions that night. He wrote a book where he blamed the design of the reactor and the other workers. The only thing I'm not sure on was whether he was truly motivated by ambition the way the show stated he was.

[dooog]

Brilliant finale to an incredible series. Loved Legaslov's testimony explaining in laymans terms to the court (and viewer) what exactly happened with the reactor that day.

This has to be right up there with Band of Brothers, The Jinx and Generation Kill as one of the best miniseries ever. All HBO series as it happens.

[Heartofice]

1 hour ago, Trebla said:

Dyatlov. From what I read, he was really that bad. He really did threaten everyone in the control room that night and to his dying day he never took responsibility for his actions that night. He wrote a book where he blamed the design of the reactor and the other workers. The only thing I'm not sure on was whether he was truly motivated by ambition the way the show stated he was.

He’s also even more evil looking in real life than you could imagine. It’s almost like he should have been cast as himself in the show.. you know... if he wasn’t dead 

[Lordsteve666]

That last episode's court room explanation of the disaster should literally be required viewing in schools when learning about nuclear power. I've never seen the intricacies of the chain of events and the lead-up explained so well before, it really should be something everyone sees.

My reasoning for that opinion is that way, way too many people these days think they know everything about nuclear power and that things like Chernobyl are everyday risks from nuclear power use. There's a great many people who would probably be fairly surprised I would hope were they to learn that something like that chain of events should be literally impossible in many countries.

Chernobyl imo is not a warning of the dangers of nuclear power use, it is a warning about the dangers of badly run nuclear power use. Of how corruption, greed, lies, deception, lack of empathy and disregard for a truth that may upset your sovereign states's global power standing can lead to a massive cataclysm.
Nuclear power is not evil, to disrespect its potential to do harm when mismanaged is.

As for the show, that final series of images and clips of the real events, combined with text to honour the people who gave their lives and health were very touching.

[Martini Sigil]

... I think I may have missed something.... in the beginning of the first episode... right before he hung himself, Legasov hid the accounting of what actually happened near his garbage... did anyone find it?

... the bit with the cards at the trial was great... it was as much for idiots like me than it was for the committee 

[Lordsteve666]

11 minutes ago, Martini Sigil said:

... I think I may have missed something.... in the beginning of the first episode... right before he hung himself, Legasov hid the accounting of what actually happened near his garbage... did anyone find it?

... the bit with the cards at the trial was great... it was as much for idiots like me than it was for the committee 

I believe this is how the rest of the scientific community heard his testimony. The trial was pretty much a closed doors affair but he recorded a testimony before he killed himself.

It's not explicitly explained in the show but I think those tapes were found after his death and that is how word got around. His death shocked people, I guess someone who knew him best thought to look for something he left behind.

[Leofric]

2 hours ago, Lordsteve666 said:

I believe this is how the rest of the scientific community heard his testimony. The trial was pretty much a closed doors affair but he recorded a testimony before he killed himself.

It's not explicitly explained in the show but I think those tapes were found after his death and that is how word got around. His death shocked people, I guess someone who knew him best thought to look for something he left behind.

I assumed he placed the tapes there on purpose as a pre-arranged dead drop for someone to collect later and distribute.

[red snow]

19 hours ago, Leofric said:

I assumed he placed the tapes there on purpose as a pre-arranged dead drop for someone to collect later and distribute.

I thought they suggested in the montage at the end that the Russian scientific community were well aware of legasov's findings and ut gad spread by word of mouth from those at the trial and i imagine those who knew worked with him (Watson's character was an amalgamation of 17 other physicists afterall). When he killed himself they all spoke out - it's a lot harder to silence everyone when they are shouting together.

[Leofric]

59 minutes ago, red snow said:

I thought they suggested in the montage at the end that the Russian scientific community were well aware of legasov's findings and ut gad spread by word of mouth from those at the trial and i imagine those who knew worked with him (Watson's character was an amalgamation of 17 other physicists afterall). When he killed himself they all spoke out - it's a lot harder to silence everyone when they are shouting together.

I agree that others already knew about his findings, but a "death-bed" confession in his own words, carries a lot more weight than second hand accounts.    Plus its safer to distribute words of truth from a dead man, than to risk arrest or death by speaking up in your own words.

[Raja]

Finished this the other day!  I liked a lot of it, I think it's done really well, but the English accents took me out of it. I know Mazin has addressed this before, but when you're being authentic in every other way, it sorta rings false when I hear those accents. Other than that, I have few complaints about the show.

I just think it would have had more of an impact on me had it been subtitled, but oh well. It's a decent series, but it doesn't go to the top tier for me ( especially when it comes on the back of something like When they see us, which I watched a day prior to starting Chernobyl) 

[red snow]

4 minutes ago, Raja said:

Finished this the other day!  I liked a lot of it, I think it's done really well, but the English accents took me out of it. I know Mazin has addressed this before, but when you're being authentic in every other way, it sorta rings false when I hear those accents. Other than that, I have few complaints about the show.

I just think it would have had more of an impact on me had it been subtitled, but oh well. It's a decent series, but it doesn't go to the top tier for me ( especially when it comes on the back of something like When they see us, which I watched a day prior to starting Chernobyl) 

I think it depends on want you want, actors speaking russian with subtitles, or people putting on silly russian accents which could be insulting and is also a distraction for the actors. I'll admit that I found skarsgard's accent ridiculous at first, as if he'd be better off in a dick tracy film.

[Raja]

1 minute ago, red snow said:

I think it depends on want you want, actors speaking russian with subtitles

I would totally be fine with that, and I think it would have been more impactful *for me* if that had been the case. I think the series would have stayed with me a little more. 

I love Jared Haaris & Skarsgard though, I think they're both great. 

[Heartofice]

The English accent has become short hand for anything outside of America really. I think it’s kind of accepted now as a way of presenting Europe without having to do silly accents. 

[red snow]

1 hour ago, Heartofice said:

The English accent has become short hand for anything outside of America really. I think it’s kind of accepted now as a way of presenting Europe without having to do silly accents. 

I kind of like how northern is the go to for more sociable/communist versions while southern accents/oxbridge is largely kept for evil villains. And Scottish for psychopaths. It generates a giggle in how they use stereotypes of English speaking accents to avoid stereotypes of how people with other languages speak English with an accent.

1 hour ago, Raja said:

I would totally be fine with that, and I think it would have been more impactful *for me* if that had been the case. I think the series would have stayed with me a little more. 

I love Jared Haaris & Skarsgard though, I think they're both great. 

It keeps GOT extras in business. There were several in this show.

[Trebla]

In "This is NOT The Onion" news, Russian TV is creating a tv series about Chernobyl is response to this series. In this new series, the TRUE culprits will be American spies who infiltrated the plant and caused the explosion. https://news.avclub.com/russia-hates-hbos-chernobyl-vows-to-make-its-own-serie-1835298424

 

Quote

 

The Kremlin, who, per this piece from The Moscow Times, has used its media arm to launch a “mini-crusade” against the series, which has apparently become a source of fascination in Russia.

“The fact that an American, not a Russian, TV channel tells us about our own heroes is a source of shame that the pro-Kremlin media apparently cannot live down,” writes the Times’ Ilya Shepelin. “And this is the real reason they find fault with HBO’s Chernobyl series.”

Part of this crusade is a Russia-produced series from the country’s NTV channel. Directed by filmmaker Alexei Muradov, their project will focus not on the aftermath of the explosion, but instead on what Shepelin calls a “conspiracy theory” that inserts American spies into the narrative.

Of his story, Muradov says, “One theory holds that Americans had infiltrated the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and many historians do not deny that, on the day of the explosion, an agent of the enemy’s intelligence services was present at the station.” The heroes, then, will not be the scientists, soldiers, and civilians who helped prevent a further spread of radiation, but rather the KGB officers trying to thwart these CIA operatives.

 

If the Putin-loving Steven Seagal doesn't star as the KGB hero, it will be a real travesty. And I fully expect our President to give it a GLOWING review. 

 

 

[DaveSumm]

10 hours ago, Raja said:

I would totally be fine with that, and I think it would have been more impactful *for me* if that had been the case. I think the series would have stayed with me a little more. 

I love Jared Haaris & Skarsgard though, I think they're both great. 

That would’ve been my preference, Russian actors with subtitles. Sadly though, adding subtitles cuts your viewing figures massively and the show wouldn’t have reached nearly the audience it has.

[Heartofice]

9 hours ago, red snow said:

I kind of like how northern is the go to for more sociable/communist versions while southern accents/oxbridge is largely kept for evil villains. And Scottish for psychopaths. It generates a giggle in how they use stereotypes of English speaking accents to avoid stereotypes of how people with other languages speak English with an accent.

Ha yes. I think that there is a lot going on under the hood when movies and TV shows use British actors for roles. Whats so good about British dialect is that there are just so many of them and they all tend have their own stereotypes and connections. Northerners are usually cast as tough no nonsense working class heroes, Londoners as soft educated intellectuals. The scots are friendly drunks and the welsh.. don't tend to exist. Either way I do think that this is all used as a short hand for identifying characters to the audience without having to explain who they are. GoT hugely relied on this. 

While it would be great if everyone was Russian and it was subtitled, there is a whole level of communication that is wiped out when you don't have the dialect differences to tell you clues about who someone is.

[Maltaran]

The Death of Stalin did the English accent thing very well, especially with Jason Isaacs playing Zhukov as a Yorkshireman

[red snow]

6 hours ago, Maltaran said:

The Death of Stalin did the English accent thing very well, especially with Jason Isaacs playing Zhukov as a Yorkshireman

I was trying to remember where I'd also seen this done in place of rusdian accents! Yeah, they really went to town with it. Buscemi was also super OTT too.

 

10 hours ago, Heartofice said:

Ha yes. I think that there is a lot going on under the hood when movies and TV shows use British actors for roles. Whats so good about British dialect is that there are just so many of them and they all tend have their own stereotypes and connections. Northerners are usually cast as tough no nonsense working class heroes, Londoners as soft educated intellectuals. The scots are friendly drunks and the welsh.. don't tend to exist. Either way I do think that this is all used as a short hand for identifying characters to the audience without having to explain who they are. GoT hugely relied on this. 

While it would be great if everyone was Russian and it was subtitled, there is a whole level of communication that is wiped out when you don't have the dialect differences to tell you clues about who someone is.

Like you say it's actually quite an effective tool to employ in tv and film (probably comes from radio drama come to think of it)

[Trebla]

6 hours ago, Maltaran said:

The Death of Stalin did the English accent thing very well, especially with Jason Isaacs playing Zhukov as a Yorkshireman

"That fucker thinks he can take on the Red Army? I fucked Germany, I think I can take on a flesh lump in a fucking waist coat."   

I LOVED that movie. That probably is why the accents in Chernobyl didn't bother me. I think some of the actors in another HBO movie about the Soviet Union, "Citizen X", also used their normal accents rather than Russian ones.