Chernobyl [HBO]

[Zetetic]

Finally pushed myself to finish watching this two years later.

It's not very good, even if it's quite stylish.

[Smeraldina Rima]

This bump causes Lost Oliver some embarrassment.

[Poobum]

This came out 2 years ago? What? Fuck off time, leave me alone.

[touchingcloth]

Finally pushed myself to finish watching this two years later.

It's not very good, even if it's quite stylish.

It's a slow burner and doesn't really get properly going until series 3.

[mothman]

If avoid the follow-up TV movie though. It was a blatant attempt to cash in - Channel 5 even showed it, and they didn't broadcast the original series. And worst of all, it has none of the original cast but instead focuses on a new character, a rare acting role for Ben Fogle, playing - poorly - a TV presenter.

Spoiler alert

And he doesn't even die at the end.

[close]

[JaDanketies]

I loved this but my gf / now fiancee didn't; probably too slow-burning. Once she came in when there was some quiet bit happening and it was making all these cool scary dark-ambient noises and she mockingly said, "Wow, they're playing your favourite song!" Because I like avant-garde bleeps, bloops and industrial noise, and she doesn't.

And then a few weeks later, I googled the person who did the score for it and they had

played and recorded with the bands Pan Sonic, Throbbing Gristle, Múm and Stórsveit Nix Noltes, and has toured with Animal Collective and Sunn O))).

so yeah she might've had a point

[Zetetic]

The sound design was one of the things that convinced me it was bad before the writing completely fucked itself.

I like dreadful bleeps and bloops but I didn't them constantly telling me that Dead Deer Show Chernobyl Bad. Went a long way towards undermining the invisible terror of radiation when slowmo and the score kept kicking in.

[chveik]

holy shit 11 pages for this

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

My housemate and I watched it recently. I thought it was very good indeed. I've read some dissenting opinions regarding how accurate it truly is, but it shat me right up. I almost blubbed when Harris and Skarsgard had their heart to heart at the trial.

It certainly made for a fun pairing with The Terror.

[Zetetic]

What pushed me into "I hate that they spent so much time and money on this" territory is that by the end it feels like it was completely uninterested in actual understanding its own central theme of being unable to tell the truth.

To me, it seemed like wasn't really interested in why the Soviet Union often was particularly terrible with respect to that (and I'm prepared to believe that this was the case) and how that was perpetuated and how dealing with Chernobyl challenged that (which again is something I'm very prepared to believe).

[Zetetic]

And I feel like I'm the perfect mark for "good sciencey man takes on the evil authorities with the power of truth and his own reputation".

[Claude the Racecar Driving Rockstar Super Sleuth]

So you're saying it was 3.6 Roentgen?

[Zetetic]

Probably the actual *thing* that turned me fully against it was Legasov's testimony at the trial.

1) There's a bunch of things that try to setup the versimilitude of that scene. The clear presence of the camera, the Russian-language janky prop, the moment where a soldier moves a microphone kind of awkwardly.

2) Legasov's monologue becomes very stupid towards the end. Enough that I was curious what he actually said, assuming in reality it would have been framed in a way that was plausibly digestible by Soviet citizens and politicians, rather than determinedly counterproductive.

3) But in reality... he wasn't there.

So you end up with the scene that's the climax of what the series is actually about, desperately trying to seem historical and real, being a complete fiction and pretty shoddy one with it.

[Dex Sawash]

Does anyone remember why it is you shouldn't buy Ukrainian underpants?

[touchingcloth]

Does anyone remember why it is you shouldn't buy Ukrainian underpants?

Because they have no flies, but we all know what is the cost of flies.

[neardark]

Nah it was brilliant. Cheers.

[studpuppet]

Spoiler alert

And he doesn't even die at the end.

[close]

Not yet leastways, but if we've learnt one thing about radioactivity, it's that it plays the long game.

[mothman]

Not yet leastways, but if we've learnt one thing about radioactivity, it's that it plays the long game.

Oh, you're just saying that to cheer me up...

[Lost Oliver]

I've forgotten!

[druss]

I think I'll have to pass on radiation poisoning from an exploded nuclear power station core, thank you.

[mothman]

Try anything once...