![]() ![]() ![]() Upon reaching the power plant, Vasily witnesses one of his firefighter friends, Misha (Sam Strike), pick up a chunk of graphite from the ground at the base of the reactor. Nagaitis’ smiling confidence sets us up for the peril that Vasily will soon come face-to-face with at the plant. Vasily assures Lyudmila that the situation is not serious and that he will return in the morning, telling her not to worry and to go back to sleep. He does his best to comfort his wife, Lyudmila (Jessie Buckley), who is concerned by the eerie glow from the reactor that is visible in the distance, perhaps a mile or two away from their apartment window. Vasily is matter-of-fact about his being called to the scene with his fellow firefighters, even though he does not typically work on the late night shift. Vasily’s arc from happy-go-lucky citizen to doomed hero is depicted in only a few scenes and without much dialogue over the course of the episode, which is titled “1:23:45” in reference to the moment when Chernobyl’s reactor #4 exploded. The character is portrayed by Adam Nagaitis, an English actor probably best known to Americans for playing Cornelius Hickey in season one of AMC’s 2018 drama “The Terror,” and it is Nagaitis’ subtle handling of Vasily in the first episode that made me realize I was fully invested in “Chernobyl.” Like his comrades, Ignatenko was awakened by the nuclear explosion that occurred at 1:23 AM, and was sent to help put out the fire without any understanding of the danger involved. Of the many firefighters who lived in and around Pripyat and were sent to the Chernobyl power plant to douse the blaze – not realizing that the incident was more than a “roof fire” and that the site was overflowing with deadly radiation – the show concentrates on one man in particular, Vasily Ignatenko. Instead, I would like to shine a spotlight on the one acting performance more than any other that drew me into the show, the confirmation that I cared about the characters in the aftermath of the tragedy. It would be easy to write a thinkpiece praising “Chernobyl” many others have done so. And what does it mean for a show to be “plot-heavy” but devoid of significant acting? In this case, it seems like some prospective viewers expected “Chernobyl” to focus its energy entirely on the nuclear accident – even though that obviously wouldn’t be the main event of every episode, unless the series were a Soviet Groundhog Day – yet somehow avoid showing the effects that the catastrophe had on the residents of the town of Pripyat, as well as on the scientists and government officials who were brought in to assess the disaster. Metacritic scores and review aggregation are all well and good if a viewer’s preferred method for determining the value of art is rooted in statistical percentages, but there is no substitute for the experience of watching a show and judging it for yourself. Looking back at member forums on Gold Derby, I’ve noticed that prior to “Chernobyl’s” debut on May 6, a number of people expected it to succeed primarily on technical merits. Now that the acclaimed show is over, there is agreement on Jared Harris’s strong chances for Best Actor, as well as good odds of recognition for Stellan Skarsgård and Emily Watson in their supporting roles, but this widespread appreciation wasn’t assumed before the show aired. ![]() Now that awards season is upon us – voting has begun for the 2019 Emmy Awards, the nominations for which will be announced on July 16 – the discussion of predictions for the various “Limited Series” categories has opened up. Like just about everyone under the sun, I watched HBO’s miniseries “Chernobyl” with grim fascination, hooked on writer Craig Mazin and director Johan Renck’s presentation of how and why the 1986 nuclear disaster occurred in Soviet Ukraine. ![]()
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