“Chernobyl”: A Hell-on-Earth Tale Inside the Late Soviet Union

Averting global catastrophe is not unfamiliar stakes for film and television. Any superhero, no matter his or her franchise, has done it countless times. But usually those feats of heroism do not include shooting all the animals — domestic and otherwise — within 1,000 square miles. That’s what makes the true story of Chernobyl a unique one to tell.

At the helm of this HBO and Sky TV miniseries is Craig Mazin, one of the most celebrated screenwriters in the business. More than his writing credits on such unnecessary sequels as Hangover 3 and Scary Movie 4, Mazin is famous for co-hosting the Scriptnotes Podcast, the Holy Bible of podcasts for aspiring screenwriters on topics of craft and industry.

In Chernobyl, Mazin ventures outside his wheelhouse of ensemble comedy for a hell-on-earth tale of historical drama inside the late Soviet Union, chronicling the explosion of the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986 and its aftermath. The site of the action is dreary indeed: slate gray concrete piled against a background of unrelenting cloud-cover. The environment buzzes with the unquiet chop of helicopter blades and the foreboding crackle of Geiger counters. On the ground, the unfortunate souls who find themselves within deadly range of the blast suffer burns. Those burns fester into lesions. Soon, the victims are…