Every Chernobyl Episode Ranked From Worst To Best

If Shcherbina’s ‘You will do it because it needs to be done’ sums up the attitude in the aftermath, ‘Why worry about something that isn’t going to happen’, said by Alan Williams’ Charkov in Vichnaya Pamyat explains in a single moment how this was allowed to happen in the first place.

Paul Ritter is even more terrifying here in flashbacks, than he was in 1:23:45, and Harris, who until now had been a little overshadowed by Skarsgard’s masterful turn, but in episode 5 he comes into his own.

His courtroom speech captures explaining the science well, and you believe he’s going to retreat into bare facts, before he seizes his chance and points the blame at the door of the Soviet Union. There’s no grandeur or spectacle from him; just cold, dry facts.

As ever, it’s the little moments that sell it. A dutiful soldier awkwardly adjusting the mic, the moment between Legasov and Shcherbina and Legasov looking around the door to check if he’s being executed... these all weave into the fabric of absolutely first class television.

For all the high production values the rest of the show has had, the courtroom scene somehow feels the most chaotic and claustrophobic; a testament to Johan Renck’s phenomenal direction.