⚠️ Chernobyl (2019) – Review ⚠️
“This isn’t entertainment. This is a warning.”

Let’s start by showing y’all the trailers, shall we?

And honestly… I feel weird even saying that.

Because the trailer doesn’t prepare you. It can’t. It shows atmosphere, dread, some visuals — but it doesn’t convey the weight of what you’re about to sit through. It doesn’t tell you that once you start this series, you’ll feel like you’ve willingly stepped into something you can’t unsee.

⚠️ IMPORTANT WARNING BEFORE CONTINUING ⚠️

If you continue past this point — whether watching the show or reading this review — understand this clearly:

This series contains prolonged medical horror, radiation sickness depicted in graphic detail, human bodies breaking down slowly, institutional cruelty, children and civilians unknowingly being sentenced to death, and a level of existential dread that does not let up.

Episode 3, in particular, is an endurance test. It’s the episode where many viewers stop entirely — not because it’s bad, but because it’s too much. If you make it through that episode, you’ll know whether you can finish the series.

This is not a show you casually recommend. This is the kind of show you recommend with hesitation… and guilt.

Non-Spoiler Plot Overview

Chernobyl is a five-part HBO miniseries dramatizing the real-life nuclear disaster that occurred on April 26th, 1986, at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in Soviet Ukraine. The story begins the night Reactor 4 explodes and follows the immediate chaos, the government denial, the desperate scientific effort to prevent a second explosion, and the horrifying human cost paid by workers, firefighters, soldiers, miners, and civilians.

This is not a story about heroism in the traditional sense. It’s about damage control after the damage is already irreversible. It’s about how lies compound faster than radiation spreads. And it’s about how people in power will always hesitate — even when hesitation kills.

Character Rundown

Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) is a nuclear physicist who understands the scale of the disaster almost immediately. He also understands that telling the truth may destroy him. Harris plays him like a man already haunted by the future.

Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård) begins as a dismissive, bureaucratic enforcer of Soviet authority and slowly transforms into a man forced to confront the consequences of arrogance. His arc is one of the most quietly devastating parts of the show.

Ulana Khomyuk (Emily Watson) represents the collective scientists who fought to expose the truth. She is persistent, furious, and constantly blocked by a system that prioritizes appearances over lives.

But the real protagonists are the nameless: the firefighters, the plant workers, the liquidators, the miners, the families — people who never agreed to be part of history and paid for it anyway.

Pacing / Episode Flow

The pacing is oppressive by design. The show doesn’t rush because radiation doesn’t rush. It creeps. It lingers. It waits. Each episode adds another layer of inevitability. There is no “release episode.” There is no moment where things feel okay again.

And Episode 3 is where the show stops asking politely whether you’re comfortable and just dares you to keep watching.

Pros

This show is meticulous, horrifying, and brutally honest. The performances are career-defining. The sound design alone creates anxiety — the Geiger counter clicks become a kind of auditory PTSD. The realism is relentless, and the show never lets you forget that this happened.

Cons

This is not rewatchable for many people. Some scenes feel physically unbearable. The animal liquidation scenes are extremely difficult, and I skipped portions of them. Also, if you need hope or catharsis, this show will not give it to you.

Final Thoughts

Chernobyl is one of the best miniseries ever made.

It’s also one of the hardest things I’ve ever watched.

Not because it’s graphic in a cheap way — but because it’s accurate. Because it refuses to cut away. Because it forces you to sit with consequences.

I struggle recommending this show — not because people shouldn’t watch it, but because I know exactly what it does to you once you do.

Rating

8.6 / 10

Points deducted solely because of the animal execution scenes. I cannot handle those.

⚠️ SPOILER WARNING ⚠️

From here on, full spoilers. Episode by episode. Nothing skipped. Nothing softened.

Episode 1 – “1:23:45”

The series opens two years after the disaster. Valery Legasov records tapes in his apartment, calmly explaining the truth about Chernobyl — then hangs himself. This isn’t a mystery. You already know how this ends.

We rewind to the night of April 26th, 1986.

Reactor 4 explodes.

Immediately, the worst possible response follows: denial.

Senior engineers insist a reactor explosion is impossible. Firefighters are sent in without warning, without protection, without knowledge. They spray water onto an exposed nuclear core — unknowingly worsening the situation.

Ash drifts through the air like snow. Families stand on a bridge watching the glow, letting radioactive particles settle into their hair, their lungs, their children.

Everyone on that bridge is already dead.

The episode ends with the realization that no one in charge is willing to say the words “the core exploded” — because admitting it would mean admitting responsibility.

Episode 2 – “Please Remain Calm”

Legasov and Shcherbina arrive. Radiation readings are falsified. Equipment maxes out. Graphite is spotted on the roof — definitive proof the core is exposed.

Actual radiation levels are revealed: 15,000 roentgen. Lethal within minutes.

Helicopters are sent to dump sand and boron. One flies directly over the plume.

It crashes.

No one survives.

Children continue attending school. Life continues. Birds fall dead from the sky. The lie expands outward like a shockwave.

Episode 3 – “Open Wide, O Earth”

This is the episode that breaks people.

Firefighters are hospitalized. At first, they seem to improve — which is the cruelest part. Radiation sickness gives false hope before total collapse.

Then the reality sets in.

Skin blisters and peels. Hair falls out in clumps. Organs shut down. The immune system collapses. Morphine stops working because there’s nothing left for painkillers to dull.

Vasily Ignatenko’s body begins to decompose while he’s still alive.

His wife Lyudmilla ignores every warning. She touches him. Kisses him. Stands close. She’s pregnant. The doctors tell her she’s poisoning herself — she doesn’t care.

This episode doesn’t flinch. It doesn’t cut away. It forces you to look at what radiation does to a human body when there is no cure.

Many viewers stop here. I understand why.

Episode 4 – “The Happiness of All Mankind”

The cleanup begins.

Liquidators are sent to shovel radioactive graphite off the reactor roof — 90 seconds at a time before receiving lethal exposure. Robots fail. Humans replace them.

Animals are executed because they’re contaminated. Dogs. Cats. Pets left behind. This is where I skipped scenes. I won’t pretend otherwise.

Miners dig a tunnel beneath the reactor in unbearable heat, stripping naked because their clothes become soaked with radiation-laced sweat.

Everyone involved knows they’re sacrificing years — possibly decades — of their lives.

Episode 5 – “Vichnaya Pamyat”

Legasov exposes the truth in court: a fatal reactor design flaw that guaranteed explosion even during an emergency shutdown. This wasn’t incompetence alone — it was systemic negligence.

He tells the truth.

And pays for it.

He’s stripped of his work, silenced, isolated, and forbidden from speaking about Chernobyl again.

Two years later, he kills himself — but not before recording tapes that finally force the Soviet Union to acknowledge reality.

Only after his death do they listen.

The bodies of the firefighters are buried in cement-lined graves, sealed in metal coffins, entombed permanently because even in death they remain dangerous.

Chernobyl is never reinhabited.

The damage never truly ends.

Closing Thoughts

Chernobyl isn’t horror — because horror implies exaggeration.

This is history.

And that’s why it’s unbearable.

I recommend this show… carefully. With warnings. With hesitation. With the understanding that once you watch it, you’ll carry it with you.

This isn’t something you forget.

And part of you might wish you never saw it.