HBO's 5-Part Miniseries Will Restore Your Faith In TV

Published Sep 18, 2026, 8:00 PM EDT

Faith Roswell is a Senior Writer on Screen Rant's Classic TV team. Since earning her degree in Creative Writing over a decade ago, Faith has written articles on film and TV from a variety of different angles. Faith now combines her knowledge of psychology with her love of monster movies to give more insight into what makes the best ones. 

You may have read her Screen Rant lists and features covering horror, sci-fi, and fantasy, or read her Amazon Top 10 book, "Movie Monsters of the Deep."

Faith has had an extensive career as a writer, appearing on BBC live radio, researching true crime for Rotten Mango podcast, and writing for publications including Mental Floss, Atlas Obscura, and The Daily Jaws before beginning here at Screen Rant. 

The Golden Age of Television has been defined by HBO's prestige dramas like The Sopranos and Mad Men, which not only appeared to break the rules but introduced a new wave of creativity that has not yet been paralleled, until HBO created a miniseries that flew under the radar but is now a must-watch. The post-apocalyptic genre now evokes images of horror shows like The Walking Dead, or video game franchises like The Last of Us, but even the best post-apocalyptic TV shows of all time cannot compete with HBO's miniseries that brings the genre back into the real world.

The post-apocalyptic genre tends to center on imagined scenarios, turning everyday people into the closest thing to superheroes, while including horror staples like mutants and zombies, but HBO's five-part series Chernobyl tells an entirely different and much more frightening story. The show can be binged in a day, but it may take longer as each episode of Chernobyl is more disturbing than the last and its impact is certain to last longer. That said, Chernobyl is powerful enough to restore your faith in TV, while taking a well-deserved place among the best TV miniseries ever created.

Chernobyl Is The Pinnacle Of TV As A Medium

Dramatizing a real historical event is a difficult task, especially when the event happened in living memory. The best historical TV shows ever made capture the tone of the time, while highlighting the impact on individual people, even if the show's characters are original creations. Chernobyl follows the 1986 disaster caused by the catastrophic explosion in Ukraine's nuclear power plant, which released massive amounts of radiation into the atmosphere, and features a mix of composite characters and those based on real people. The miniseries has been widely praised for virtually every element of its creation as peak TV.

Chernobyl has won over 60 awards, including ten Primetime Emmy Awards, ten BAFTAs, and two Golden Globes.

Chernobyl's cast include some of the best actors of this age, who excel at portraying complex characters under immense pressure. This includes Jared Harris (Mad Men,) Stellan Skarsgård (Andor,) Emily Watson (The Book Thief,) and Jessie Buckley (Hamnet.) With just five episodes in which to tell a complex story, the series has no filler, with every scene advancing the story. HBO already had a reputation for excellent quality, but Chernobyl deserves its masterpiece status for exploring the moral issues at the center of the story without ever losing sight of the horrendous result of the decisions made.

A detail that is not always noticed on a first watch is the incredible sound design, which uses the sound from Geiger counters and industrial machinery to great effect, creating an atmosphere that is inseparable from the looming disaster. Still, while the Chernobyl miniseries is not 100% accurate, it gets the fundamental details right, including the suffering of the people directly involved and those affected with no connection to the workings of the power plant. It is this human element that gives the series its impact, but also makes it a difficult watch.

Chernobyl Is Tough To Watch At Times, But Impossible To Look Away From

Chernobyl has been described as "the scariest TV show ever made that isn't horror," as it is frightening on several levels at once, with the scenes of birds falling out of the sky being one of the most unforgettable visuals. There are few things that evoke the feeling of helplessness than the terror of nuclear fallout, and the miniseries captures this perfectly, without ever feeling as though it is trying to scare its viewers. On top of this is the government cover-up, which feels especially timely now, reminding us that horror can be created through simply doing nothing.

Chernobyl is not the first project that has centered on a real-life tragedy, but many of the alternatives have been contentious, accused of using the events to add drama to another story, like the critically panned Remember Me, which uses the events of 9/11 as a tragic final twist. On the other hand, Chernobyl is a masterpiece for its realism and for never losing sight of the events, which are at the center of the story rather than acting as the backdrop for a different one.

No matter how hard the miniseries is to watch, everyone should see Chernobyl as it is by far the most accurate, concise, and comprehensive explanation of the disaster and its human toll that we currently have. While most people who will watch the series will be aware of the basic facts around the events covered and the way that the story ends, this is not the main reason that Chernobyl is a must-watch. The series is a masterclass in storytelling, with powerhouse performances from all involved, and these deserve to be seen.

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  Jared Harris

  Valery Legasov

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  Boris Shcherbina

Chernobyl is the Emmy award-winning mini-series by Craig Mazin created for HBO that retells the dramatic story of the Ukrainian nuclear disaster in the 80s. The show follows the true story closely with some dramatizations but still follows the fallout of the atomic event and tells stories from those closely involved to the efforts of first responders and other teams who helped with the cleanup efforts.