Masha Gessen writes about the truths and fictions of the HBO series “Chernobyl,” starring Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård, Jessie Buckley, and Emily Watson.

"Before I get to what the series got so terribly wrong, I should acknowledge what it got right. In “Chernobyl,” which was created and written by Craig Mazin and directed by Johan Renck, the material culture of the Soviet Union is reproduced with an accuracy that has never before been seen in Western television or film—or, for that matter, in Russian television or film. Clothes, objects, and light itself seem to come straight out of nineteen-eighties Ukraine, Belarus, and Moscow...

Masha Gessen writes about the truths and fictions of the HBO series “Chernobyl,” starring Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård, Jessie Buckley, and Emily Watson.

"Before I get to what the series got so terribly wrong, I should acknowledge what it got right. In “Chernobyl,” which was created and written by Craig Mazin and directed by Johan Renck, the material culture of the Soviet Union is reproduced with an accuracy that has never before been seen in Western television or film—or, for that matter, in Russian television or film. Clothes, objects, and light itself seem to come straight out of nineteen-eighties Ukraine, Belarus, and Moscow...