Chernobyl (Season 1)

Chernobyl (2019) is an HBO and Sky drama miniseries you can watch online. Across five episodes it reconstructs the 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl power plant — from the seconds after Reactor 4 explodes to the long, brutal cleanup. Based on real events. Its driving question: what is the cost of lies?

Physicist Valery Legasov (Jared Harris) and Soviet deputy chairman Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård) are sent to figure out what actually happened, while the state insists everything is under control. Helping them is Ulana Khomyuk (Emily Watson), a single character who stands in for dozens of real scientists. Closer to the blast are firefighter Vasily Ignatenko (Adam Nagaitis) and his wife Lyudmilla (Jessie Buckley), who feel the fallout long before anyone admits it exists.

Writer Craig Mazin and director Johan Renck built the story from documents and survivor testimony, much of it drawn from Svetlana Alexievich's book. Hildur Guðnadóttir's unnerving score was recorded inside a real power plant. Ten Emmy Awards, two Golden Globes, and a reputation as one of the most accurate historical dramas ever made. Stream all five episodes of Chernobyl online on iFILM.