HBO/Sky AtlanticA Russian TV channel is said to be making its own Chernobyl series based on a conspiracy theory the CIA infiltrated the nuclear power plant.
The 1986 disaster has been brought to centre stage once again thanks to HBO’s five-part miniseries, which was recently crowned the channel’s most popular series ever.
Overflowing with shadowy politics, devastating decisions and almost unbearable tension, this chilling miniseries will no doubt go down as one of the big television events of 2019.
While the series is widely believed to be historically accurate, it has been criticised by pro-soviet Russian columnist Anatoly Vasserman, who said:
If Anglo-Saxons film something about Russians, it definitely will not correspond to the truth.
Only the very first episode of HBO and Sky’s Chernobyl focuses on the disaster itself, while the rest of the series follows the heroic people who fought to save Europe at the cost of their own lives and health. But as the Moscow Times reports, Russia doesn’t recognise these people as ‘heroes’, with Putin only referencing them on major anniversaries of the terrible incident.
HBO/Sky AtlanticSo instead, the Russian drama will offer up a thrilling detective film based on a conspiracy theory in which a KGB officer struggles to out American spies who ultimately become the villains of the tragedy.
Director Alexei Muradov referenced the conspiracy, telling the Moscow Times:
One theory holds that Americans had infiltrated the Chernobyl nuclear power plant and many historians do not deny that, on the day of the explosion, an agent of the enemy’s intelligence services was present at the station.
This multi-part television movie will tell viewers about what actually happened.
HBO/Sky AtlanticRussian journalist Ilya Shepelin writes:
The fact that an American, not a Russian, TV channel tells us about our own heroes is a source of shame that the pro-Kremlin media apparently cannot live down. And this is the real reason they find fault with HBO’s Chernobyl series.
Chernobyl was written and executive produced by Craig Mazin (The Huntsman: Winter’s War) with Johan Renck (Breaking Bad) in the director’s chair.
The Farm 51The cast includes Jared Harris as Soviet nuclear physicist Valery Legasov; Stellan Skarsgård as Soviet Deputy Prime Minister Boris Shcherbina; and Emily Watson, as Soviet nuclear physicist Ulana Khomyuk.
Chernobyl aired each week on Sky Atlantic and HBO. HBO Home Entertainment will digitally release Chernobyl as of June 24.
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Emma Rosemurgey is an NCTJ trained Journalist who started her career by producing The Royal Rosemurgey newspaper in 2004, which kept her family up to date with the goings on of her sleepy north east village. She graduated from the University of Central Lancashire in Preston and started her career in regional newspapers before joining Tyla (formerly Pretty 52) in 2017, and progressing onto UNILAD in 2019.