Chernobyl series premiere review: When the truth is unrecognizable

The premiere of HBO’s Chernobyl is powerful, chilling, stomach-churning journey into the horrors of radiation and bureaucratic mismanagement in a crisis.

At 1:23 a.m. at a Soviet nuclear power facility in present-day Ukraine, a series of catastrophic circumstances resulted in an explosion in the reactor core that destroyed the building and began venting a radioactive cloud into the atmosphere. But of course, everyone has heard of Chernobyl—it is synonymous with nuclear disaster. And it’s that preexisting knowledge in the cultural subconscious which makes the miniseries premiere so effective. This show finds the horror in a man picking up a rock, and that’s not an exaggeration.

Early on in the first episode, one of the firefighters called to extinguish the reactor fire leans down to pick up an oddly shaped piece of debris from the rubble surrounding the exploded reactor building. It’s safe to assume that everyone in the area is insanely irradiated, so pretty much everything the characters interact with is a cause for further anxiety—but he turns it over and reveals the cylindrical imprint which an hour before would have fitted closely around a nuclear fuel rod. He is unknowingly holding in his unprotected hand one of the most radioactive objects in the world.

He drops the piece of graphite and walks away, shaking his hand vaguely. A short time later the man is in agony, and when his glove is stripped off we see the horrific radiation burns on his palm—which is only the first sign of the true damage. For what makes Chernobyl so terrifying, and so heartbreaking, is the unseen radiation which seethes out of the burning reactor with every passing second.

But the first episode does not begin with the explosion itself. The first scene is exactly two years after the disaster, with the haggard Valery Legasov (played by Jared Harris, and yes, it is time for me to once more take up the cry of give him his Emmy) recounting the events of the disaster to a tape recorder, alone in his dingy kitchen.

The cost of lies

His narration focuses on the idea of the truth—or more specifically, on how so many lies can make the truth unrecognizable. “What is left then?” he asks. “What else is left but to abandon even the hope of truth, and content ourselves instead with stories? In these stories, it doesn’t matter who the heroes are. All we want to know is: who is to blame?”

Legasov is aware, even as he’s telling it, that this is a story which will be told, retold, twisted and manipulated for a long time to come. It touches on the mythic quality of the event, and starts out the series with the assertion that if the truth is now impossible, then this will be a story—and the story that we all know might not be the one closest to the truth. It’s such an important assertion for any historical drama to make: that in the end, any retelling of history will be shaped by what is included and what is omitted by the ones doing the telling.

The cover-up begins

Chernobyl demands a lot from its audience, and not just in the sense of asking viewers to take its story with a grain of salt. The subject matter itself is at times almost unbearable. Though tapping directly into the drama of the event, it never leaves behind the element of human suffering in exchange for sensationalism. It handles its subject with sensitivity; but that doesn’t make it any easier to watch as the night shift at the power plant, under orders from Antoly Dyatlov, stare straight into the fire-wreathed core of the reactor, buffeted by skin-peeling waves of radiation which will kill them within hours.

Almost equally difficult to stomach are the physical effects of the radiation are the actions of those in charge of the disaster. Dyatlov simply refuses to believe that the reactor has exploded—he sends those men into the core to investigate, and when one of them returns, blistered and vomiting, to tell him that there is no core, he looks the man in the disintegrating face and tells him that he’s delusional. He then proceeds to order the day shift called in early, thus sentencing even more people to be exposed to the radiation.

It is only when he collapses, hours later, that he seems to finally and forcibly understand what has happened. But not before also dooming Pripyat. The decision to cut off the town and not allow anyone to leave is framed as one to avoid panic, for the good of the Soviet Union. It is made with one of the reactor workers sitting outside the room, only allowed to come in and explain the situation to a handful of people once the decision has already been made. There is no cause and effect between the situation and the response. It’s all politics, and it’s sickening.

Avoidable tragedies

The premiere is a series of death sentences. Characters are ordered into the core to face fatal amounts of radiation. The firefighters are called in without being told a word about the danger. The citizens of Pripyat stand on a bridge to watch the beautiful and eerie light of the fire while irradiated ash drifts down onto their faces. A baby is lifted out of its carriage to see better. It is horrifying because of everything the characters cannot know, and what we as a modern audience know too well.

What this episode did so admirably, and what the show will no doubt continue to hinge upon, is the terror in the seemingly innocuous. Strangely shaped rubble. A fall of ash. A dead starling. A pattern which remains inscrutable to the people living within it, but from the safe and insurmountable distance of the future, we can only watch it unfold.

The next episodes of this show are undoubtedly going to be heartbreaking. But then again, with a show like this one that was always a given.

Chernobyl airs Mondays on HBO at 9 p.m. ET.