Cautionary lessons reiterated in riveting ‘Chernobyl’

Jared Harris (left) and Stellan Skarsgard in HBO’s “Chernobyl” —PHOTOS BY LIAM DANIEL/HBO

Before Chernobyl became the ghost town that it is today, it was a beautiful, bustling city in the Kiev region just 16 kilometers away from Soviet-era Ukraine’s shared border with Belarus. It had 14,000 residents in those days, but the catastrophic nuclear disaster that occurred on April 25-26, 1986, in the now disestablished urban haven and the once-gorgeous towns around it left a trail of death and destruction in its wake.

Considered the most devastating nuclear power plant accident in history, the so-called Chernobyl disaster is one of only two nuclear-energy accidents (the other being the Fukushima tragedy in 2011) given the maximum level-7 classification on the International Nuclear Event Scale.

“Chernobyl,” the riveting five-episode HBO series that began its telecast yesterday, delivers an astutely paced race-against-time dramatization of one of the world’s worst man-made disasters. It wears its ugly scars on its sleeve like warnings that demand to be heeded and reiterated.

Skarsgard

The show’s theme is binge-worthy in itself, but it’s made more viewable by an exceptional cast, led by Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgard and Emily Watson, who helps string its intersecting stories together with as much believability as thespic proficiency.

It doesn’t quickly point a finger at the culprits who chose to ignore the red flags that kept popping up before the deadly and disastrous meltdown ran its course.

However, it does warn viewers about the real danger that results “when we hear enough lies—and we no longer recognize the truth at all.”

At the heart of Episode 1 is Anatoly Dyatlov (Paul Ritter) being meted out 10 years of prison time for “criminal mismanagement,” as well as secret recordings left by someone who takes his own life soon after he successfully hides them from the sinister shadows lurking in his midst.

Emily Watson

While Anatoly appears to be fighting a culture of disinformation, brave men and women risk life and limb to save Europe from unimaginable disaster. Talk about the dire repercussions of fake news.

The tragedy begins when one of the nuclear plant’s reactors explodes during a late-night safety test that simulates “a power blackout, in the course of which both emergency safety and power-regulating systems are intentionally turned off.”

To simplify the scientific gobbledygook: The heat becomes so intense that it can melt firefighters’ boots in an instant.

The government then cuts the phone lines and seals off the city to prevent the “spread of misinformation,” as a way of containing the ensuing PR nightmare, not realizing the danger it consequently exposes its people.

Helping prevent the catastrophe from spreading even more are Professor Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) and nuclear physicist Ulana Khomyuk (Watson), who must convince stubborn Boris Shcherbina (Skarsgard), the government’s top honcho who’s tasked to investigate the “accident,” that they aren’t just engaging in conjecture.

But their persistent plea to evacuate the city—and the regions around it—isn’t merely the result of alarmist hysterics.

Harris

As Ulana explains to an apathetic public official, “If you don’t call for immediate evacuation, hundreds of thousands of people will get cancer. If they stay in these places, 50,000 people will die within five years … and the whole area will be deemed uninhabitable for a minimum of 100 years.”

With radioactive wind blowing all over Europe, the devastation could soon reach Latvia, Lithuania, Belarus, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania and Germany! Aside from cancer, there will be a staggering number of birth defects.

In the succeeding two episodes, viewers will see the thrilling drama further unfold as Boris, Valery and Ulana set their differences aside to convince Mikhail Gorbachev (David Dencil) to help them avert a devastating global disaster.

Unfortunately, they must also convince some “skilled workers” to sacrifice their lives to save hundreds and thousands of people in Ukraine and all over Europe.

This true-to-life miniseries, which airs exclusively on HBO and HBO Go at 9 a.m. every Tuesday with a same-day encore at 10 p.m., is a compellingly realized reminder that superheroes aren’t just seen on the big screen. When we least expect it, they come to life—and save the day!