Watch: Chernobyl might be the best series of the year
Yes yes, intense statement as a headline right away, but it is true. Texts like ‘best series ever’ I have also read on the internet, ‘best rated series ever’, ‘series of the moment’… Yes, then the expectations are certainly high. But those expectations are met by Chernobyl, you know. Actually, there is only one downside that prevails, and that is that it is not available on Netflix or on Videoland. No, for this series you have to go to Ziggo. But you can't really blame the series for that little downside. Believe me: this series makes such an impression that switching providers is almost worth it. Well, almost. Just maybe do it.
As the name suggests, the series revolves around Chernobyl, and then what this place is known for: the nuclear disaster in 1986. That took place in Ukraine, which was still part of the Soviet Union at the time. Now, this disaster has always interested me quite a bit, but seeing it depicted on screen is something completely different. I was mainly looking at photos of how Chernobyl is now: an abandoned ghost town. Very bizarre to see. If you have never seen those images, I can absolutely recommend that Google search. And of course just watch this series, because in terms of cinematography, it is really well put together.
The series Chernobyl consists of five episodes. From the explosion at the nuclear power plant and how that is downplayed (while people are dying from burns due to radiation) to the evacuation and the aftermath of this nuclear disaster. The characters in the series, such as Valery Legasov (head of the investigation), are actually the names of the people who played significant roles in Chernobyl at that time. At the end of the very last episode, you also see photos and videos of these people telling their ultimate fate. Just in case you didn't realize: it may not be the most light-hearted and sunny series. It is raw, intense, and very impressive, but I couldn't turn it off. I wasn't even on this planet when this happened, so it's quite bizarre to imagine how it was back then and how people acted during this disaster at that time, especially the seriousness of it. That hits a bit harder than when you read about it in a history book.
Fun detail: today it came out that Putin is not entirely happy with how his country is portrayed in Chernobyl. Shocking, I know. In his eyes, Russia never does anything wrong, and so they were innocent in this disaster as well. That's what he thinks, huh. And he is so angry about it that he is going to film how it ‘really‘ happened. I think that will be a nice piece of Russian propaganda. I guess that series will score slightly worse in the rest of Europe, but it will surely become a Russian hit.
