Shot in Fabijoniškės, Lithuania, this 5-episode mini-series by HBO is a cracker so far (one episode in). It puzzles me how there’s not, to my knowledge, been a major TV series or film about Chernobyl until now. One wouldn’t expect this would come from the Russian slice of the former Soviet Union, but you’d think Ukraine (its ‘western-oriented’ regions) would have put something together.
Documentaries have been galore, the main theme that the disaster was indicative of the pitfalls of communism, and a metaphor for the swift end of the USSR in the Gorbachev era of glasnost and perestroika.
This is mind-blowing, though, a real-life 28 Days Later (2002) with wild animals replacing the ‘infected’:
I know a good lad I met in Budapest, a fellow traveller named Paul. He’s the only person I’ve met who’s wandered into Pripyat’s Zone of Alienation with a Geiger counter. I have an epic image of him strolling about in a Walter White biohazard suit, with a beer hat atop the garb.
Further reading/viewing:
https://variety.com/2019/artisans/production/hbo-chernobyl-lithuania-nuclear-plant-1203208391/
Remnants of a rather bonkers epoch in Thailand. It was my own private version of Apocalypse Now (1979). Guns, booze, beaches, mosquitos, monuments, and 7-Elevens. Good times.
Wanderings and ... wonderings. 