"Chernobyl" broadly excels it two things: in the technical aspect, aided by its meticulous and extensive research, lack of fear of getting bogged down in the minutia etc; and in presenting well-written, engaging characters, aided by its compelling, talented cast. It broadly fails in one thing: be a series about the Soviet Union.

The Chernobyl accident, its liquidation and investigation of its causes are described in detail. It is easy to pick up many details about the operation of a nuclear reactor or the cleanup of a nuclear accident's aftermath. It's similarly easy to pick up some things about how the Soviet Union operated, how various officials interacted between each other and with the population. And while the former trivia category seems to be broadly correct, the latter is broadly of the comic-book variety, presenting the 1980's USSR as a land still stuck in the 1930s with threats of execution, worries about execution and wanton callousness and incompetence making up the majority of one's daily concerns or activities. Many have elaborated in more detail, including Leonid Bershidskiy in The Moscow Times or Masha Gessen elsewhere, and I recommend taking a look at their articles and keeping them in mind watching the series.

Additionally, I'm not too keen on the vast temporal disconnect between the two "control room" episodes - the 1st episode is more confusing than it needs to be without the context of the last one, although the investigation culminating in the trial does present a nice narrative structure, I suppose.