‘Chernobyl’ TV miniseries: the reviews from ground zero

The 1986 Chernobyl nuclear disaster was a global wake-up call, a human tragedy that is still unfolding. It was also a deathblow to the credibility of the Soviet Union, which had proudly developed the reactor’s deeply flawed technology and whose bureaucracy tried to deceive the world for several days about the accident’s scope and consequences.

This is a story with universal import. But in the post-Soviet states of Russia and Ukraine – the latter being where the disaster occurred – it’s also personal. Many people in the region vividly remember those strange and terrifying days, and a dwindling cohort of Chernobyl veterans still wrestles with the lingering effects of radiation.

So one might expect