Chernobyl is an HBO miniseries 5 episodes long that chronicle the devastating real-life events that took place in 1986 at a nuclear power station in northern Ukraine this is a story of one of the world's worst man-made catastrophes and we follow a group of people some real some fictional as they try to deal with this disaster so yeah I am way behind on this one I mean when it comes to TV shows I usually tend to be that the guy that waits for other people to say that they're really great before I invest the time in them because they take a lot more time than a movie I like to be an early adopter of a film but I'm usually late to the party when it comes to great TV I wait for people to tell me Game of Thrones is good and then I watch it I wait for people that I'm with the Breaking Bad was good and then I watch it so in the case of Chernobyl as soon as everyone was saying it was like the greatest show ever in fact on IMDB it's been ranked as the number-one highest-rated TV show of all time naturally I wanted to watch it and it is great one of the things that strikes me the most about this show is the sense of realism when it comes to TV and especially movies directors like to make things seem really big and in the case of this miniseries there are parts that are fiction there are characters that don't exist in real life representing entire groups of people and there are conversations that nobody could possibly know what exactly was said private moments and those have obviously been created for our entertainment but there's a grounded sense to this show that feels as if it's pushing for realism when most of the time in movies are TV they might try to get really big and have these grand moments but there's plenty of scenes that go over in excruciating detail how a nuclear power the station works just exactly why this problem is so devastating and what it can mean four thousand and thousands of people over the course of many many years and in that way, the show is terrifying because sure some of those scenes can be looked at as exposition for the audience and in many ways, it is we have to understand how these things work to understand why we should be afraid of them those scenes are handled with such care from 

the director and the writer that those proceedings feel very raw and they remind us just how scary this planet can be when things go wrong and in the case of Chernobyl a lot of things went wrong and a lot of it is built around people who were lying and people who never thought anything bad would happen to them there's one specific scene where two characters played by stone skarsgård and Jared Harris they're sitting down talking about how most people just assume that things don't happen to them they go on with their lives knowing that they'll die when they're 85 and everything's going to be fine but sometimes that doesn't happen and we had an entire group of people who just assumed nothing was going to happen and we got Chernobyl out of it and this show is meticulous in its craft of exploring this an event exploring the horror of it the chaos of it but also showcasing characters that just assumed everything was going to be fine and we're gonna get into some spoilers here so if you have not yet seen Chernobyl I highly recommend it it's definitely, an excellent miniseries and worth your time just purely forward the directing and writing craft alone but especially for some of the performances like JaredHarris who gives I think the best performance of his entire career stellanskarsgård is also really strong here a sis Emily Watson so now that we got the spoiler warning out of the way there's a woman in the TV show who is pregnant and her husband's a firefighter who went initially to try to put out the flames that this disaster started and she just follows her husband everywhere he thinks he's gonna be okay he's playing cards his skin is melting away and he thinks everything's just gonna be fine and despite being pregnant she's there right by his side getting infected by that radiation characters in this show make decisions that turn your stomach there's a sequence where people have to go into a town and just kill all the animals so if you have a thing with dead dogs this show was gonna fuck you up holy shit 

they knew where to turn the screws to make you feel as if you were watching an event that was absolutely excruciating to live through but at the same time it honors those who were first responders who were victims of the event and especially with the final episode you learn of just the extent of the corruption that was going on behind the scenes that made everything possible and it pisses you off you know it makes you mad and it should because this should never happen again an event like this which is something that I heard quite a bit about when I was a kid this should never exist like this is not something that should ever occur on our planet and so it makes you mad it makes you want to make sure that that never happens again it makes you want to do something and that's awesome that a miniseries can do that purely from a creative side though what's so interesting to me about this series is the writer Craig Mazin and his journey because if you look at his filmography he has made tons of spoof movies he wrote some of the scary movie films he wrote superhero movie The Hangover Part 2 The Hangover Part 3 identity thief and now suddenly he just shows up and is like hey I wrote Chernobyl fuck you how did that happen that's awesome good job man like that's really fucking cool love whenever a writer or a director is able to reinvent themselves and they just say like actually I'd rather be doing this or not necessarily that he'd rather be doing this but just that hey you don't have to stay and do the exact same thing for your entire career you can also have strengths and other fields so this tells me studios out there don't put your creative people in a box don't assume that X person can only do comedy don't assume that Y a person can only do drama everybody has strengths and weaknesses but you can explore what you would love to do and find ways to make that possible so it's kind of inspiring if you look at his career trajectory and see where he's gone it kind of makes you want to say the hell with it and just starts writing your screenplay don't listen to other people just open up that computer and start writing it doesn't matter whether people think just work on it and

I didn't expect to be that inspired by just looking at his filmography but I've never seen such a change Johan rank and I apologize if I said that incorrectly lens a steady hand to this entire show it's beautifully shot he's mostly known for music videos and some TV like Breaking Bad in the Bates Motel and here he brings something to it that again just feels very grounded at times you feel like an observer a fly-on-the-wall, it's a bit documentary esque but not as hand-held as you might expect from something like paul green grass and his the approach there's a lockdown sensibility to the way he Helms this show and it's really really well done and he knows just when to end an episode the shot that is going to leave you as chilled as you possibly could be when it comes to negatives there's like one kind of slow episode the second for the last episode is probably the weakest that episode didn't feel as strong as the others didn't feel as emotionally tormenting as the others and that's about it and even when I say that it wasn't as good as the others it was still great because the episode has this rooftop scene that is just so nail-biting and terrifying so it's hard to find a weak link in the show it's really strong and I highly suggest checking it out I'm gonna give Chernobyl an a definitely check this one out guys, I do think it's worth your time and I'm sorry then it took me so long to watch it I've just been like super busy and as I said sometimes I don't really jump on board with TV shows until I hear that they're really great but I'm excited I did get to see it and I hope you guys check it out too if you haven't already I do also want to give a big thank you Chernobyl already they have some documentaries about that event including nature fights back in Chernobyl this is a French film where the filmmakers actually go directly into the exclusion zone and butterfly effect Chernobyl this is part of a popular series that envisions what would happen if things went differently during turning points in our history thank you guys so much as always for reading my movie reviews and thank you guys are the best look forward to more reviews very soon and if you like this you can comment write here and get stuck mine eyes