The FCC would drop a goddamn hammer on HBO if they featured hardcore sex in their programming. It’s not a lack of willingness on their part.
The FCC can't do anything to HBO, they could show porn if they wanted. they can show whatever they want since they don't broadcast over the airwaves.
The ratings they show at the beginning are just a courtesy so they don't get angry phone calls from Moms that let their 7 year old child watch GoT
I gotta say, the music in this show is fucking stellar. Just absolute dread.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aM_HhU_CV44
i love how the soundtrack is 100% dark ambient/drone/noise. nothing else would match the bleak, haunting atmosphere
Craig Mazin is an incredible writer! I began wondering what else he's written.
https://i.imgur.com/6L8e417.png
I guess the moral here is not to count anyone out too early.
Yeah, I was looking at that earlier today and its astonishing. Like, how do you go from doing Hangover movies and nothing anyone cares about to something as fucking great as this? Obviously the dude isn't a bad writer, he just needs the right material and he turns out gold.
yes and also there's this thing called money that you can make a fuckload of by selling screenplays or writing trash
One thing I just noticed about this show is the colour palette. Everything is drab, there's no brightness and vividness to any colour, even outside of Chernobyl and Pripyat is drab. Healthy grass is green, but it's not a vivid green. Combine that with the incredibly well done soundtrack, and even without any dialogue you've got a miserable, bleak atmosphere with no sense of hope.
Is this show perfect? Of course it isn't, I've heard one Eastern European accent in the 3 episodes released so far. Is it worthy of praise? Fucking right it is. Will it hold up when we rewatch in a few years time? I guess we'll have to say, but going by HBO's past shows, I reckon so.
The director actually addressed that in the first episode podcast. Initially they had actors doing Russian accents, but it just sounded silly, this was supposed to be a serious show without any comic relief and the it was hard to make a fake Russian accents stay serious. They made the decision to forgo the accents so the actors could focus their vocal efforts on their performance instead.
Ah well, that's my bad. I haven't listened to them becauseI'm not hugely into podcasts, but it sounds like these ones are really informative and interesting from what people are saying in here, so I might well give them a go.
I think it was a smart decision to forego the accents. Like I get it gives it an extra air of authenticity, but at the same time I think they would have gone for native Russian dialog with translated subtitles for that to be proper. I think movie-magic is actually more realistic in this case since clearly in-universe they are speaking Russian and are hearing everyone each other without any distinct 'foreign' accents, thus to the audience we are hearing it in English without any strong (non-English) accents.
It was definitely the right decision, like Mr Someguy said with them making the decision for them to forego accents to allow them to focus on the acting performance, you can tell that they're able to focus on their performance a lot more than if they were having to do an accent at the same time. It gives them that extra freedom to focus on other things, it's one of those creative choices that allows the actors to flourish.
Obviously the most authentic choice would've been to go with Russian/Ukrainian speaking actors, as soon as you switch to English you lose that layer of authenticity. I don't think adding cheesy accents on top would help at all, it'd just keep reminding you that it is indeed out of place that everyone is speaking English. I have to agree that not having accents was the right choice, it sounds a little weird at first, but halfway into the first episode you forget that it's even an issue.
Finally had time to watch the first episode tonight. This is pretty much exactly what I wanted and more. High historical accuracy, but also a lot of focus on the human horror of this incident. The people paying the price for the arrogance and blindness of this entire system. And gorgeous cinematography. The set design in particular is absolutely on point.
I wonder what the Ukrainian people think about this show.
I asked an ukrainian friend, he wasn't able to watch it, too close to home. He thought it looked accurate and made with care for the events though.
https://i.imgur.com/PhvF0mb.jpg
you motherfucker
https://twitter.com/SlavaMalamud/status/1132029943297265664?s=19
Thread about the incredible anthenticity of the show. The writer is in the replies.