[2][3] The release of each episode was accompanied by a podcast in which Mazin and NPR host Peter Sagal discuss instances of artistic license and the reasoning behind them.

[7] The series depicts some of the lesser-known stories of the disaster, including the efforts of the firefighters who were the first responders on the scene, volunteers, and teams of miners who dug a critical tunnel under Reactor 4.

The miniseries is based in large part on the recollections of Pripyat locals, as told by Belarusian Nobel laureate Svetlana Alexievich in her book Voices from Chernobyl.

[30] On March 19, 2018, it was announced that Stellan Skarsgård and Emily Watson had joined the main cast, marking their second collaboration after Breaking the Waves.

Director Johan Renck heavily criticised the amount of diverse and eye-catching modern windows in the houses, but was not concerned about removing them in post-production.

In August 2018, she began recording the score with Chris Watson at the Ignalina Nuclear Power Plant, where the series was being preliminarily shot.

[49][50][51] The series also discusses a potential third steam explosion, due to the risk of corium melting through to the water reservoirs below the reactor building, as being in the range of 2 to 4 megatons.

Several sources have commended the attention to even minor setting details, such as the use of actual Kyiv-region license plate numbers, and a New Yorker review states that "the material culture of the Soviet Union is reproduced with an accuracy that has never before been seen" from either Western or Russian filmmakers.

[58] In a more critical judgment, a review from the Moscow Times highlights some small design errors: for instance, Soviet soldiers are inaccurately shown as holding their weapons in Western style and Legasov's apartment was too "dingy" for a scientist of his status.

However, Ukrainian medical responder Alla Shapiro, in a 2019 interview with Vanity Fair, said such beliefs were false, and that once Ignatenko was showered and out of his contaminated clothing, he would not have been dangerous to others, precluding this possibility.

She claimed reporters hounded her at home in Moscow and even jammed their foot in her door as they tried to interview her, and that she suffered criticism for exposing her unborn daughter to Vasily, despite the fact she hadn't known anything about radiation then and that risk to a fetus from such exposure is infinitesimally small.

[58] She said she never gave HBO and Sky Atlantic permission to tell her story, saying there had been a single phone call offering money after filming had been completed.

HBO Sky rejects this, saying they had exchanges with Lyudmilla before, during and after filming with the opportunity to participate and provide feedback and at no time did she express a wish for her story to not be included.

Breus, the Chernobyl engineer, argues that the characters of Viktor Bryukhanov, Nikolai Fomin and Anatoly Dyatlov were "distorted and misrepresented, as if they were villains".

[57] Some reviews criticized the series for creating a stark moral dichotomy, in which the scientists are depicted as overly heroic while the government and plant officials are uniformly villainous.

The website's critics consensus reads: "Chernobyl rivets with a creeping dread that never dissipates, dramatizing a national tragedy with sterling craft and an intelligent dissection of institutional rot.

[69] Reviewers for The Atlantic, The Washington Post, and the BBC observed parallels to contemporary society by focusing on the power of information and how dishonest leaders can make mistakes beyond their comprehension.

[70] Sophie Gilbert of The Atlantic hailed the series as a "grim disquisition on the toll of devaluing the truth";[71] Hank Stuever of The Washington Post praised it for showcasing "what happens when lying is standard and authority is abused".

[73] David Morrison was "struck by the attention to accuracy" and says the "series does an outstanding job of presenting the technical and human issues of the accident.

"[74] Jennifer K. Crosby, writing for The Objective Standard, says that the miniseries "explores the reasons for this monumental catastrophe and illustrates how it was magnified by the evasion and denial of those in charge," adding that "although the true toll of the disaster on millions of lives will never be known, Chernobyl goes a long way toward helping us understand [its] real causes and effects.

"[75] In a negative article titled "Chernobyl: The Show Russiagate wrote," Aaron Giovannone of the American left-wing publication Jacobin wrote that "even as we worry about the ongoing ecological crisis caused by capitalism, Chernobyl revels in the failure of the historical alternative to capitalism, which reinforces the status quo, offering us no way out of the crisis.

[77][78][79] Vladimir Medinsky, Russian culture minister, whose father was one of the Chernobyl liquidators, called the series "masterfully made" and "filmed with great respect for ordinary people".

[80] It was reported that Russian state-run NTV television channel has been producing its own "patriotic" version of the Chernobyl story in which the CIA plays a key role in the disaster.

[85][86][87] He also demanded that Russia's Federal Service for Supervision of Communications, Information Technology and Mass Media (Roskomnadzor) block access to the "filthy" miniseries.

"[91] Bermet Talant, a Ukrainian journalist, noted that "In Russia, a state that still takes pride in the Soviet legacy, the series has faced criticism from the official media.