If there’s one television series that’s gripped audiences over the last few weeks, it’s HBO’s Chernobyl.
Indeed, the grim, dark and often disturbing new show has everyone talking, as it brings us a completely devastating and often horrifying account of the nuclear accident from 1986. Though it concluded a couple of days ago, it’s still on viewers’ minds, with folks praising Chernobyl for its incredible performances and smart writing. Frankly, it’s without a doubt one of the best things the network’s done in a while, but understandably, those in Russia haven’t taken to it too well.
If you’ve seen the show, you’ll know that it doesn’t exactly depict those who were in charge of the country at the time in the best light and makes a pretty strong case for why the government should be held at least partly accountable for the disaster. And though many would probably agree with that, Russia’s now striking back.
Deadline’s reporting today that Russian state TV channel NTV is working on its own show about the 1986 incident and obviously, it’ll take a much more patriotic stance. Among other things, the series will claim that a CIA plot was somehow to blame for what happened, with the description of the show reading as so:
“It’ll follow a CIA agent dispatched to Pripyat to gather intelligence on the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and the Russian counterintelligence agent who’s sent to track him down.”
Meanwhile, director Alexey Muradov promises that the series “will tell viewers about what really happened back then.” And though no further details have been disclosed just yet, this is certainly an intriguing prospect, having Russia produce their own version of what happened.
Then again, it’s hard to imagine the project rivaling what we saw with Chernobyl. HBO’s series packed more into five episodes than most shows manage in their entire run. Acting as a rigorously accurate dramatization of the events both before and after the meltdown of Chernobyl’s Reactor 4, it’s likely to go down as one of the very best things to appear on television in 2019 and we can only hope that the team behind it decides to tackle another event next.