Everybody it seems is talking about this series being the must-watch show of the year, plus it sits at number 1 on the IMDb TV chart which would tend to indicate it is something special.

With an absence of really well-known actors in the cast, it has to be all about the drama and on that it certainly delivers. It starts off with the mysterious suicide of a middle-aged man living in a nondescript flat in Russia who secretly posts away some dictated cassette tapes before doing the deed. From there we are taken back to the terrible events of 1986 when a mixture of human traits such as ignorance, conformity, parsimony, bullying and misplaced ambition combine for the catastrophic explosion to occur at the Chernobyl nuclear plant. Although the narrative occasionally drops back and forth in time to present different perspectives on events, it pretty much takes us through the natural timeline leading up to the incident itself including its aftermath so that by the very end we know the identity of the dead man and just what was on the tapes.

The depiction of the drama in the control room where a succession of errors leading up to the blast is shown twice, once at the beginning for dramatic effect, the second, at the end where each mistaken communication is highlighted and explained in detail to confirm seemingly beyond doubt that this was no system or hardware failure, every component in the disaster was attributable to human failing..

Three main characters emerge to attempt that near-impossibility in late 1980's Soviet Russia, namely to expose the truth even when that truth points back at failings at governmental level. The State, you see, is above criticism and to point this out, (with diagrams!) as Legasov does at the official Russian enquiry is to place yourself at the mercy of the KGB, which is of course, no mercy at all and so Legasov loses his career and even his academic legacy as he is reduced to impoverished near-anonymity in his seedy little flat. Behind him is the deputy Soviet leader Boris Scherbina who changes from dedicated apparatchik to truth campaigner, especially when he too exhibits symptoms of the life-shortening radioactive poisoning which will claim him and thousands of others long before their time over the succeeding years. The third campaigner is a composite character Uyuna Khomyuk, played by Emily Watson, a fact-finding scientist who interviewed everyone in the control room that night to arrive at the incontrovertible truth.

The recreation of the incident both inside and outside the plant was wholly convincing. Those brave men who either went down to turn on the hydraulics, move the radioactive waste from the roof, work underground or reverse the cooling rods are suitably shown as the unselfish heroes they were, even if most of them were obligated to follow orders and so didn't really have a choice. Of the five episodes, only the fourth seemed overlong and unnecessary as it showed a kill squad patrolling the evacuated city exterminating the pet dogs and cats left behind.

The ensemble acting was first rate and completely subsumed to the documentary realism effect sought for by the director. By the end, I was the better for understanding more the enormous risks mankind takes when seeking to harness nuclear power and while there is throughout the piece implied if not overt criticism of the Soviet system of cost-cutting , KGB surveillance and blind subservience to the State one remembers too that the same thing nearly happened in America at Three Mile Island and of course there was the more recent incident at Fukushima, to make one realise that these events can happen anywhere and anytime.

One can't help but wonder if at the time of the next nuclear calamity there will be anyone around afterwards to make a cautionary film like this about it or indeed any viewers here to watch it.