The story the miniseries covers could not be more compelling or terrifying. The series captures the dread and terror very well and is certainly compelling cinema. However, even accounting for some artistic liberties, an accurate turn by turn depiction of events it is not. If one reads the gripping accounts of historical events, such as Grigori Medvedev - The Truth About Chernobyl or Adam Higgiinbotham - Midnight In Chernobyl and watches original footage of the aftermath, as in the excellent documentary The Battle for Chernobyl, it becomes clear that the depictions are far, far away from historical accuracy. That may or may not matter to you, but it does for me. Much more so as it was billed as historically accurate. Soviet leadership was in the dark during the early hours, as local leadership deliberately downplayed the magnitude of what happened. The incompetence, the stalling, the disbelief and denial by those who were on site, all swept under the rug. Even though BBC's Seconds from Disaster docudrama had given a blueprint, which - oddly enough - the miniseries references in specific cinematic moments. There are scenes where the cinematography conveys in pictures a stylized version of the primal fears instilled in us of deadly radiation, but it tends to revel in these moments too much. The look on the firefighter's face gazing into the inferno, the general in his chemical warfare suit being decontaminated, the ridiculous plume above the reactor (it wasn't dense black smoke but an innocent looking thin white smoke wafting over the reactor). Sometimes the seemingly innocent looking surroundings of a beautiful and unusually warm spring surrounding radiation fields that could kill a human within a minute is more terrifying. Sometimes, less is more. It is this almost cartoonish exaggeration that bothers me the most.