When did dramatized tv become misinformation? It wasn’t a documentary…

That's how many historical movies and contemporary shows work though. Like, we all know CSI techs aren't clearing rooms like SWAT in real life. But the story is far easier to follow if we keep it to a few characters the audience knows.

If we're talking about the HBO show, then calling it a documentary is just straight up wrong in the first place.

It's a "based on real events" TV drama that never claimed to be a rigorous retelling of the catastrophe.

There are a ton of immediate differences to reality that anyone even vaguely familiar with soviet history would notice.

It was never supposed to be more than the broad strokes though. Even those were largely unknown in the West.

Oh. People from English-speaking countries don't sink you with downvotes immediately for criticizing that show anymore. Nice.

Even the broad strokes are, eh, how do you say it, eh ... worse than Tom Clancy and that's an achievement I'm not sure everyone is capable of measuring.

It's funny though how such series about "USSR" talk in fact about something American. Reminiscent of the "17 moments of spring" series which were about a Soviet spy in Berlin in the last months of WWII, but mostly explored Soviet ideology and morality issues.

That's a pretty narrow way to cut yourself off from a LOT of great storytelling.

Chernobyl still is one of the best shows I've ever watched. Not a documentary but it doesn't try to be. It tries to be good historical drama and it is. Very gripping.

Yeah, that wording is so misleading. "Inspired by real events" is the more accurate wording, but I feel like I haven't seen anything with that in ages.

Some works will outright lie about it. For example, the TV show and movie Fargo specifically tell you it’s a true story, and even that names have been changed but ‘the rest has been told exactly as it happened’.

To me that’s weird. It doesn’t really add to the end result in my opinion, but would breed distrust when people discovered it was wholly fictional.

Still, even with things that are meant to be accurate portrayal of an event, it’s always good to check the facts. Hollywood just can’t help but fiddle with reality to tell a more interesting story, even when it doesn’t need it.

Literally went over like everyone in this thread

1. The reactor's kill switch worked fine, but another reactor reacted to it
2. None of the Soviet's spoke fluent BBC english at the time
3. All the scientists were squashed into a single organism called "supafrique" who was the main antagonist
4. The level of radiation blasted into the atmosphere was greatly exaggerated by captain planet
5. Superman sealed up the hole in less than 10 minutes
6. Chernobyl is actually pronounced "Churro-nob-yell"
7. Everyone who was underwater and worked to kill the reactor actually gained telepathy later on
8. It was actually hard to write this list. This was a great tragedy.