7 Reasons Why You Should Be Watching Chernobyl

Going hand in hand with the pacing, the chilling way the horror has crept up each episode has been timed to perfection too. To dismiss the show as simply a horror would do it a disservice; but so would ignoring these sequences in favour of the finger-snapping dialogue.

With some exceptions for the nuclear scientists out there, very few of Chernobyl’s viewers know how a nuclear reactor works. Jared Harris’ character gives a serviceable explanation so we get the gist, but realistically we still haven’t got an idea.

We know nuclear radiation is dangerous, but the details are a little bit beyond most people’s grasp. This allows Chernobyl to be uniquely unsettling in its horror, and leaves the audience as desperate as the survivors.

Usually in a horror movie, we’re willing the characters to not get caught by the monster, for them to escape the serial killer in time. In Chernobyl though, we’re both constantly and never aware of the danger.

How much radiation is too much radiation? Have they been exposed too long already? Can they escape, or would that only be prolonging their agonising deaths?