I wouldn't go so far as to give this ten stars but I did think it was well made. I'll start with the good.

1. It's in English. I don't mind subs but this show was made for an English speaking audience so having it in English makes sense. It's more accessible. It also breaks down some of the barriers between English speakers and the Russians. It separates the events from the country a little. It's easier to look at these people and relate to them and recognize these events aren't just possible in the Soviet Union. With something about a country we're typically taught is an enemy full of enemy people, I think this can be important for some viewers.

2. They got a lot right. Perfect? No. But if you want 98% accurate, watch a documentary. If you want 100%, give up. A lot of it was accurate or changed to help tell the story in an entertaining way. The purpose is entertainment 1st. Education 2nd. But it manages being fairly educational.

3. They did a great job of making the characters human. Many of the characters did terrible and dumb things but their motivations were clear and sensible. They were often idiots but they were idiots because they were human. Because they succumbed to greed, pride, fear, anger, and ignorance. They were idiots because the system was imperfect. And it was really clear how things like this can happen anywhere. They made these people human and that's one of the most important things in a story like this.

4. They showed a lot of different aspects of the disaster. Not just the disaster but the initial clean up, the long term clean up, the different groups involved, the politics, etc. It gave a good impression about how difficult something like this is.

The bad...

1. If the target audience speaks English and the script is in English, it feels off to have a truck driving around making an announcement in Russian. And there's no translation. This goes for nearly all of the Russian audio included. It needed translations in captions.

2. As usual, mini series rarely have the time to cover everything they want to and need to. There's a lot of extra stories partly included here but not enough to time to get to know the characters involved.

3. There's some scenes that last way longer than was necessary to get the point across and they contain some highly unpleasant actions. Luckily you don't see a lot but there was not reason for it to take that long. It wasn't part of the main story and it got the point across with in the first few moments. It didn't need to torture the viewer longer.

4. There's a lot of loose ends. Either there isn't time to show the completion or the main character wasn't there so it just never happens. At times, it can be jarring. Again, mini series problems.

5. The actual accident at the beginning is surprisingly slow and lacking. I think they should have started differently, but it draws you in towards the end of the first episode at least.

I was disappointed that there wasn't much about the miners since I'd seen screenshots and people talking about them a lot back when this came out. Maybe it was from a different HBO show. Idk. But, overall, it's a good story and it does well for being a mini-series.