Most people knew about the Chernobyl disaster before this show, but I doubt if many of them knew that the disaster could have rendered most of Europe uninhabitable and how people went through physical and psychological hell to prevent that from happening, how much they sacrificed to save others. In honoring those people, show does a good job and gracefully, too. But at the end, this is a TV show and let's talk about the show itself now.

The best aspect of the show is the acting and the character development and the relationships between them that also has a great development. I know parts of the show is fiction, but I don't always know which parts are so. I don't know if in real life Shcherbina and Legasov had a similar relationship, but in the show, their friendship(dare I say) is the most interesting thing. The initial lack of respect for each other leaves its place for admiration and understanding of each other. Shcherbina slowly understand the science is real and how he is in over his head and starts accepting that, which makes him gradually more and more likable. The one thing bothered me is the portrayal of Dyatlov's behavior, it seems so exaggerated and caricaturized but it is similarly acted in other documentaries, who knows. Side characters add detail to the disaster and makes you think about many tragic things you might not have realized how bad they were. The young ''soldier'' who is assigned to kill the animals is a good example. Other thing the show does well is to show the invisible enemy and the exposure to the audience. Think about the cleaning of the roof, if a person stays there too long, just stays next to some coal-like lumps of debris, they will die within days. You feel extremely nervous and uncomfortable watching people shovel rubble, you feel like you might need some iodine tablets just because watching it.

The show is really good but there is one unintentional irony about the whole thing, mentioning of which is gonna get me some dislikes, I fear, but in the spirit of the show, I'm not gonna refrain from speaking the truth just because some people are not gonna like it. The irony is that the show is criticizing Soviet ways of doing things, from an American perspective in a time when downplaying of a virus by an American president has cost so many lives. I'd like to remind you that Covid-19 has killed more than 200.000 Americans at the time of this entry. Even the highest estimates of Chernobyl disaster are around 90.000 and the conservative ones are around 4000 casualties. Don't get me wrong, Chernobyl is still far worse than the Covid. Although, Covid has emerged shortly after the show, that is just one example, the US has many coverups of their own. The truth is the ideology has nothing to do with the disaster, it is the culture. At least Russians downplayed the disaster for their national pride, which, of course, is wrong, but the Americans downplayed the virus for the market and the rich got richer while the rest of us got even poorer... There is some, unintentional or otherwise, capitalist propaganda in the show, which is very indirect and consists of 'oh, look! how bad communism is' and, as I said, it is so hilariously ironic.