The Sky man finally came a week ago. I had planned to live without Sky in my new
home, resolving not to line the Murdochs’ pockets. But two things compounded me to sacrifice my
values and change my mind. The option of
a life where I can take more control of what adverts I am forced to see was one
of them, as ranted about in my post on Gogglebox. Secondly, we’ve got the next Love Island around the corner and you can
apparently only get ITV2 HD on
Sky. With all the access to boxsets my
package promised me, I was buzzing to re-watch Game Of Thrones for treatment
on here. But no, that show doesn’t seem to be
available at the moment. Next on my list
was something people had bleated on about in May when I was in full first-time
buyer meltdown: Chernobyl. Dealing with a meltdown of a different time,
this miniseries dramatization of the 1986 disaster was held aloft as the best
thing that anyone had ever seen, now ranked at number 5 in the IMDB list of Top Rated
TV Shows (9.4). With high hopes, I downloaded
the first HD episode on my Sky Q.
I also drew the curtains (John Lewis, obviously) and put my phone
out of reach, preparing to give the apparently untold quality of the drama my undivided
attention. Sadly, though, there were
still about three minutes of adverts to wade through, but I was able to fast forward
these immediately, once I finally worked out which button was which on my new
remote in the darkened living room. A
week later, after limiting myself to no more than one episode per night of the
five that make up this series, I have completed the boxset. And I hereby attest to the incomparable
greatness of Chernobyl – the TV programme, not the nuclear explosion. The former made me punch the air and shout “worth
it” at the inordinate expense of my OLED fifty-five incher, while the latter
spread life-threatening levels of radioactivity of thousands of European square
kilometres. Let’s not confuse the two.
My attempts here to do any sort of justice to Chernobyl will
fall short, but I’ll crack on with running through what makes this programme so
remarkable all the same. You’re already
in the third paragraph so please don’t pretend you’ve got anything better to
read. Now, I was never that arsed by
chemistry or physics at school, but you will come away from Chernobyl with
quite a thorough understanding of nuclear fission. I now know my boron rod from my graphite tip,
but this isn’t down to my child-wonder levels of intelligence. Thanks to Craig Mazin’s script
(Craig a-Mazin, more like) multiple scenes contrive to see expert characters
illuminate others on what’s gone wrong.
These happen in layers so that, once you’ve built a foundation of basic
comprehension, you’re able to get your head around the sequence of events in
greater detail. It’s no mean feat: just
as fission generates electricity as if from nothing, Chernobyl generates drama from
our understanding of what should and shouldn’t happen in a nuclear
reactor. It would be worth watching for
the educational benefits alone.
Linked to the above is the constant threat of
radiation. As if the explosion itself doesn’t
build up enough tension, the action plays out against varying backdrops of radioactivity. I don’t want to reveal spoilers, but one of
my questions before watching was whether our main narrative was the build up to
the disaster itself, or the consequences that followed its occurrence. Through its dynamic and intelligent structure,
the answer is that Chernobyl is both.
This allows a single event to be played for multiple crescendos of
suspense so strong you’ll suddenly realise you’re hovering metres above your
sofa rather snuggling into your scatter cushions. Between these peaks, though, we have
background radiation to prevent anyone from ever relaxing. The erratic ticks of the Geiger counter begin
to haunt you. While this invisible
threat is actually a very cost-effective form of horror when it comes to
production budgets, depictions of its effects are disturbingly graphic. This is not a relaxing watch.
But we’re not done.
Slathered over these layers of tense action is the amplifying factor of
our Soviet setting. Gilead-like in its control of every waking
minute, this further threat to human survival rears its head several times,
whether it’s Communist Party credibility getting in the way of the population’s
best interests or the intense exchanges with head of the KGB (a spine-chilling performance
from Alan
Williams). At odds with this workers’
and peasants’ utopia, which is already looking a little tired around edges and
at odds with eighties fashion before the incident, is the fact that the
all-powerful regime can draft in hundreds of thousands of expendable human conscripts
to clear up its messes. Chernobyl is
able to relay the disaster’s impact at every level; whether a scene shows the
evacuation of thousands or bristling dialogue between our heroes leading the
clean-up, each detail is artfully executed and captured, from the constant smoking,
the ill-fitting suits and the tacky interior designs to the suspicious glances,
overuse of the word comrade and the suffocating lack of freedom under the
state.
To recap, the subject matter, the writing, the setting and
the production all give us top-quality drama, but the penultimate piece in our
puzzle is the acting. It’s very good
(said in a British luvvie commenting at the theatre sort of voice). Emily Watson displays why
she is the sort of actor who makes any line sound like a masterpiece in her
composite role as a key scientist risking her own safety to help solve Chernobyl. Alongside her, Jared Harris (known best
to me as the least sexy partner in Mad Men)
commands our support as the individual who has to make the USSR realise the
extent of the problem, Valery Legasov.
Each cigarette he lights is a manifestation of another realm of human
exhaustion. We’ve also got a Skarsgård (Stellan) doing
his best gravelly-voiced military old man routine, completing the trinity of
our three central parts. Alongside them,
a retinue of faces you’ll recognise from all sorts of places bring to life the
rest of Soviet society on the Belarussian-Ukrainian border and in Moscow.
Finally, the structure.
To build on my earlier point, this is a masterclass in drawing from a
singular horrific moment to drag us to the edge of our seats and beyond for
five hour-long episodes. This is
TV-making at its best. Sure, maybe it
could have been rushed through as a feature film, but I’d only have fallen
asleep (though I made it through Blue
Story and everyone needs to see that too).
We’re able to take our time building up not just the setting, the period
and the tension, but our longer format allows a depth of detail that enhances
the whole drama. An earnest review is a
rare occurrence on this blog, but I wouldn’t be lying if I said that I’m in two
minds about indulging in a second viewing altogether, such was the level to
which Chernobyl impressed me. Though,
perhaps impressed is the wrong word. It
chilled me: a nightmarish scenario that comes into being when a nation has the
wrong leaders.
