[osm3000]

I would have accepted that if it wasn't for Craig Mazin (the creator of the series) insistence that he stuck to the details and the truth in the series:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yY0r1Ln6tkM

For the life of me I couldn't figure out what truth he is talking about (other than that Chernobyl happened, and some characters existed)

[netrem]

They even published a podcast highlighting the creative freedoms, but failed to mention the important ones, like the fact that the reactor caps couldn't bounce up and down...

Deeply ironic for a show with the tagline "What is the cost of lies?"

[amiga386]

You think that's an important one? To me, that's just a creative liberty; the need for visuals in the seconds before the explosion led to a choice to visualise it like the top of a boiling kettle.

To me, there are more substantive issues, e.g.

* Claiming that nobody survived watching from the Bridge of Death, when it hasn't even been confirmed there was a gathering of people on the bridge, let alone any of that group dying from it. But Voices of Chernobyl contained accounts from survivors who claim they were there and happened, and it makes excellent drama, so into the show it goes.

* Raising the idea that Vasily Ignatenko was giving off dangerous radiation to his wife, but her baby "absorbed" it, killing it and protecting her. This is a complete myth, and it comes directly from Lyudmilla Ignatenko herself. It's gripping testimony, but it's simply not true, and one doctor who was there, reflected on how the myth of people being "contaminated" led to a lot of evacuated children not being accepted by families in Moscow because of this fear. (https://www.vanityfair.com/video/watch/radiation-expert-revi...)

But overall, I agree with your point, the irony is not lost. This series was utterly compelling to me, and had such amazing drama. It's almost certainly not the case that Valery Legasov gave an eloquent speech berating his own government in the middle of the Chernobyl trial, but it felt so good when he did that in the TV show. It's a lie that comforts the viewer, telling them that there is a just world, and the liars and self-serving bureaucrats and dysfunctional governments of this world will be held to account, by good people, truthtellers.

There was no mass funeral with victims buried in concrete. But the spectacle of the TV show moved me to tears. Again, dramatic license. There were victims buried in lead coffins, in regular graves: wouldn't that imagery have been enough? No, because once the show has brought you to your knees with a row of lead coffins and mourning families, the cement mixer arriving over the hill then pushes you right over the edge. The concrete flowing around the coffins is such a visually powerful scene. Even though it's false, I wouldn't ever take it out of the show.