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Year: 2019
Category: Historical Drama.
Director: Johan Renck.
Cast: Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgard, Emily Watson, Joshua Leese, Ross Armstrong, Philip Barrantini, Jessie Buckley, James Cosmo, Karl Davies, David Dencik, Caoilfhionn Dunne, Robert Emms, Fares Fares, Alex Ferns, Peter Guinness, Ralph Ineson, Mark Lewis Jones, Gerard Kearns, Barry Keoghan, James Kermack, Hilton McRae, Diarmaid Murtagh, Adam Nagaitis, Kieran O'Brien, Con O'Neill, Ian Pirie, William Postlethwaite, Adrian Rawlins, Paul Ritter, Lucy Russell, Michael Shaeffer, Jay Simpson, Jamie Sives, Michael Socha, Lucy Speed, Laurence Spellman, Sam Strike, Sam Troughton, Joe Tucker, Sakalas Uzdavinys, Laura Elphinstone.
On April 26, 1986, the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, in Ukraine, at that time part of the Soviet Union, suffered an explosion that emitted radioactive material that spread in Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and Scandinavia and Central Europe areas. The series tells from several points of view the events surrounding one of the greatest tragedies in history and the sacrifices that brave people made to save the continent from an unprecedented disaster.
For several days I heard many positive things about this series, every day the expectations increased, I wanted to see the series, but only three episodes had been aired, and since I knew that the series would only have five episodes, I decided to wait for all the episodes were available to see it.
On June 3, the last episode aired, and then I decided to watch the first episode that day at night. The first episode seemed like a job well done but it did not generate enough enthusiasm to try to see the second one at that moment, so I went to my bed to sleep. The next day I had free time so I decided to continue with the show, I put the episode 2 and from that moment I did not stop until I saw all the episodes.
I must say that it is a phenomenal series, technically magnificent, each episode is excellently directed by Johan Renck, who previously directed the film Downloading Nancy; Breaking Bad episodes such as Breakage, Más and Hermanos; the episode titled Close to the Metal in List of Halt and Catch Fire; the episode Trust Me in Bates Motel; the episode Vatos in The Walking Dead; the first two episodes of Bloodline; and the first three episodes of Vikings, he also refused to work on Better Call Saul, Game of Thrones and Homeland because he prefers to work in series with episodes with individual plots, such as Black Mirror, or those in which he can direct all episodes, as he did with The Last Panthers and Chernobyl which are his most recent works.
Johan Renck with his direction manages to transport us to that catastrophic and almost apocalyptic event that takes place in the former Soviet Union, and manage to generate more tension and terror than any other film that has been made about this event without resorting to fiction. The realism with which he shows the events on the screen causes me to acclaim his work here. The photography work is impeccable, and the way in which he decides to represent that now ancient nation is relatively accurate.
Craig Mazin was the scriptwriter of all the episodes, in his previous works we can find RocketMan, Senseless, Scary Movie 3, Superhero Movie, The Hangover Part II, Identity Thief, The Hangover Part III, The Huntsman: Winter's War; and soon Charlie's Angels.
Although Mazin's previous work does not generate high expectations, what he does in Chernobyl is magnificent, without the need to create surprising twists he develops an excellent narrative of events without exaggerating situations, being loyal to realism, and also includes a fictional character that works great to not leave important things out and fill the void that otherwise would have existed, something that allows the development of events to be organically, that is, exactly the work of a good scriptwriter.
Some of the most relevant actors in the series are the excellent Jared Harris as Valery Legasov, with such a long and good career that it is not necessary to mention his previous works; the same happens with Stellan Skarsgård as Boris Shcherbina or Emily Watson as Ulana Khomyuk, a character that have decided to include that although is fictional is also very opportune, also Paul Ritter as Anatoly Dyatlov and Jessie Buckley, whom I am pleased to see after Beast, as Lyudmilla Ignatenko, and some other excellent actors more that I have named in the first segment of the review.
The acting work in general is quite good, maybe the best was Jared Harris, however, each of the performers does it superbly, each one has a moment of prominence and when that moment arrives they do the best they can and the result is great.
In general, the series creates a powerful experience that is more about how events develop than anything else, so even if the viewer already knows what happened, the work does not lose value and the experience is not ruined. The series, always maintaining an intelligent narrative thanks to its great script and a great technical execution thanks to the director, the actors and all those involved, manages to alert the viewer in a terrifying way about the nuclear energy and its risks, maintaining a loyalty to the facts worthy of a documentary.
The Russian government did not like the way in which the series showed the causes and development of events, and now prepares its own series about it, however, technically there is nothing that I can criticize Chernobyl, it is solid from the beginning to the end. I do not think it's better than Breaking Bad or Game of Thrones even that some others, as some people have pretended it to be, even though it is superior to the last seasons of GOT, the story lacks that special magic that makes a show can be considered the best, in some strange way the same thing that makes it an excellent series, is the same that prevents it from being the best, however, I think it is one of the best I've seen and I recommend it to everyone.
With excellent direction, script, actors and technical performance, and an amazingly real story, Chernobyl introduces us to a catastrophic event in which negligence becomes criminal and the consequences are devastating, a real story full of indolence but also heroism.
