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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
24
Mixed:
3
Negative:
0
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Critic Reviews
Uncle BarkyMay 7, 2019
Season 1 Review:
Pleasant viewing it’s not. But in terms of capturing a time and place, the five-part miniseries succeeds on every level. ... HBO’s extraordinary retelling of what went down in Pripyat and the then Soviet Union at large is its own reward for now -- and a certain multiple trophy winner during next year’s awards season.
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May 3, 2019
Season 1 Review:
Powerful and haunting. ... As bleak as it all sounds, “Chernobyl” is a riveting drama that’s full of payoffs. It’s a thoroughly researched account of an event that’s still misunderstood, and it captures the sacrifices made by the Russian people — knowingly and inadvertently — in their efforts to clean up another state-sponsored mess.
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ColliderApr 26, 2019
May 6, 2019
Season 1 Review:
The series is a vivid and detailed retelling of the cataclysm. It begins as a near-real-time thriller. ... This miniseries doesn’t have too many flourishes, and doesn’t need them. Whenever Vasily explains the statistics involved — the scope of the environmental disaster, the possibility of a meltdown seeping into the water supply — the scares are tangible.
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IndieWireApr 27, 2019
Season 1 Review:
“Chernobyl” won’t be for everyone. With constant, low-simmering intensity and an all-too-visible air of death, the vivid recreation of an unimaginable disaster can be uncomfortable to say the least. ... But Mazin and Renck do an impressive job of inviting the audience into a story filled with so many horrors.
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The Daily BeastMay 6, 2019
Season 1 Review:
The esteemed actors [Stellan Skarsgard and Jared Harris] bring nuanced, complicated baggage to their protagonists, who are navigating a bureaucracy uninterested in failure, and so too does Emily Watson as Ulana Khomyuk, a nuclear authority (and composite character) who aids Harris in his quest to contain the Chernobyl tragedy as well as deduce its underlying cause. Together, the show’s headliners lend the action gravity and humanity . ... Renck and Mazin’s haunting miniseries.
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May 6, 2019
Season 1 Review:
It’s filled with details that you may not know, all sad or horrifying. Some of these lessons are medical, telling you what radiation does to the body and the environment. Others are a philosophical gut-punch, reminding us that there’s no disaster that can’t be made worse through human pettiness. Still other times Chernobyl is unexpectedly funny, in a gallows sort of way.
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May 6, 2019
Season 1 Review:
One cannot commit to watching “Chernobyl” without understanding how tough this viewing experience is. At the same time, the performances turned in by Skarsgård, Emily Watson and Jared Harris are passionate and nuanced enough to compel the tough viewers to gut out the squeamish parts. And this story is vital enough to make one hope the world has a lot of tough viewers.
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May 2, 2019
Season 1 Review:
Yes, watching this miniseries is a grim affair, and I mean that as a great compliment to creator, writer, and executive producer Craig Mazin and director Johan Renck. There’s nothing here dulled by the decades that have passed by, no compromises to make it all more watchable. It’s a nightmare well-told.
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TV Guide MagazineMay 9, 2019
Season 1 Review:
The fact that it really happened--and, for all of its devastation, could have been worse--makes this five-part slog of unrelieved misery even more chilling. [13-26 May 2019, p.11]
May 7, 2019
Season 1 Review:
There’s precious little humor, pitch-black or otherwise. Some will call this a bit of a slog. They won’t be wrong. But this five-part autopsy has more on its mind then just recreating a snapshot of IRL horror in the name of attracting subscribers and awards-season kudos. Yes, you may raise your eyebrows regarding the pedigree of those telling this story. Yet both they and the cast innately understand how this accident was able to metastasize into something that almost decimated a continent.
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May 2, 2019
Season 1 Review:
An action spectacle that dominates the premiere, which airs on May 6, this sequence captures the scale of Chernobyl’s mismanagement–yet it doesn’t connect emotionally, because we don’t know anything about the workers caught in this radioactive death trap. ... At its best, however, Chernobyl demonstrates what happens when societies stop listening to science. Amid our rapidly worsening global climate crisis, it’s a critical message.
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Apr 27, 2019
Season 1 Review:
There ultimately isn't much let-up and Chernobyl is both successful for never wincing at the fallout as it gets to the truth of the issue and hampered by the relentless bleakness of the topic and its depiction. ... You should at least know what you're getting into with Chernobyl and if you can face that awful, true story, then by all means take it in. But it won't be for everyone.
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