Chernobyl premiered on HBO two months ago and ran for five weeks. In an extremely short span, the show managed to establish itself as one of the best dramas on television in the past years and save HBO’s reputation from the disaster that the latest season of Game of Thrones was.

Chernobyl was a hit among critics and fans alike.

Currently, the show stands as the highest rated television program on IMDB with an astounding 9.5/10. The lowest rated episode of the show is rated 9.6/10 and the highest – 9.9/10.

Those numbers are insane. Especially considering that this is a miniseries that dropped with almost no advertising or promotion. Chernobyl sneaked up on everyone and we adored it.

After watching the show.

Chernobyl does one thing, among many, incredibly well. It keeps the storytelling tight. It doesn’t go off into unneeded territories or explore unnecessary storylines; quite the contrary, in fact, Chernobyl keeps it very straight and to the point and only gives us what we need to get the story and understand the awful circumstances of the disaster and its aftermath.

We could argue, actually, that it’s too short; if there’s one thing that’s wrong with this miniseries it’s probably that there are quite a few unresolved storylines. It’s better, of course, to have less than too much, quality before quantity after all, and it’s completely clear that every storyline served a specific purpose for creating horrific imagery about the aftermath of the incident. So maybe there wasn’t anything of the case; maybe each plotline served its purpose perfectly and we’re just bitter that we didn’t get more of this beautiful production.

An iconic duo.

Chernobyl knows what story it wants to tell and goes after that.

It keep to that and only that. This is massively important in an era of uprising miniseries. Showrunners can often get caught up in various details, characters, or plot-point, and try to milk those for their own amusement.

Or, in an even more likely scenario, the show does well and someone above wants more because of the high ratings. That’s completely unnecessary. The whole point of a miniseries is that it’s a MINI series; it tells its story in a short span of time, concludes it, and the viewers are left with what’s been. Expanding that because of ratings is risky and disrespectful.

This happened recently to Big Little Lies. The first season was amazing; thus, many people watched. So a second season to the MINIseries was ordered. Granted, we haven’t seen it and people say it’s brilliant, but that doesn’t make it any more needed. Big Little Lies was perfect the way it was; a concrete story, a concluded one, that needed nothing else. Why mess with that?

Someone wanted to do this with Sharp Objects, too, but the cast declined. They said that Sharp Objects was perfect the way it is and adding anything would be crazy. Kudos to those guys.

The miners beneath Chernobyl.

Which brings us to our main order of business: appreciation to Chernobyl. The miniseries is five hours long. It’s straight and to the point. They put focus where focus was necessary. They are not milking the cow. And that’s truly praiseworthy. It’s rare nowadays that we see studios and production companies focus so vividly and intently onto the quality of a story and nothing else. That’s exactly what was done with Chernobyl. Good job to the showrunners and producers. They did what many tried, but failed.

That’s it, then. We’re officially renaming our daughter from Khaleesi to Chernobyl.

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Enjoyed Chernobyl? Get the Blu-Ray here. Or if you want to learn more about the disaster, we recommend this book.

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