More than 33 years after the disaster, HBO and Sky Atlantic are set to air a big-budget miniseries based on the explosion at Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant .
The show features an ensemble cast, including Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgard and Emily Watson, to dramatise the world's worst ever nuclear disaster and what happened afterwards.
In the early hours of April 26 1986 Reactor 4 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant exploded.
The explosion and subsequent fallout, both radioactive and political, are argued to have contributed to the collapse of the Soviet Union.
Twenty eight people were killed directly when Reactor 4 exploded following a test which saw safety protocols either ignored or overridden.
Chernobyl on HBO: 'Untold true story' behind world's worst nuclear disaster
The five part series, a co-production between HBO and Sky, debuts on May 6 and will consist of five episodes.
They're directed by Johan Renck, who has worked on Breaking Bad and The Walking Dead before.
They are each written by Craig Mazin, whose previous work is mostly comedy sequels such as The Hangover parts 2 and 3.
HBO Chernobyl cast and characters
Jared Harris is Valery Legasov – first deputy director of the Kurchatov Institute of Atomic Energy.
It was around 12 hours after the explosion when Legasov was chosen to serve on the government commission investigating the incident and was flown to the scene.
He was one of the few who immediately recognized the danger of the explosion and insisted on the immediate evacuation of the entire population of the city Pripyat nearby which at the time had a population of some 43,000 people with an average age of just 27.
Stellan Skarsgard is Boris Shcherbina – deputy chairman of the Soviet Council of Ministers he was first chairman of the government commission in Chernobyl.
He arrived at Kiev on the same plane as Legasov and at first accused those calling for an evacuation of being ‘alarmist’.
To try and put out the fire Shcherbina wanted to use water, but experts explained to him that dowsing a nuclear fire with water could actually intensify the blaze.
Emily Watson is Ulyana Khomyuk – a character made up for the TV show and believed to be a composite of others involved.
The official HBO description says Khomyuk "was tasked with getting to the bottom of the deadly accident."
The Financial Times writes that: "Watson’s character is an invention, a composite of several Soviet scientists who worked to figure out what had gone so terribly wrong at the plant."
Paul Ritter is Anatoly Dyatlov – the deputy chief engineer for operations at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, Dyatlov was supervising during the test procedure that went so catastrophically wrong.
He ignored warnings from those serving under him on the night that the test should be abandoned.
He refused to believe the reactor had exploded.
On venturing outside to survey the plant, despite seeing the fuel and graphite scattered around, he still believed the reactor was intact.
Con O’Neill is Viktor Bryukhanov – plant director responsible for the construction of Pripyat and the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant.
He arrived at the plant at 2.30am the night of the explosion.
Due to limitations of available instruments, he was one of many who seriously underestimated the radiation level.
He was later prosecuted for his role in the disaster.
Adrian Rawlins is Nikolai Fomin – chief engineer and deputy to plant director Viktor Bryukhanov.
Having been told by Akimov the reactor was intact but unstable Fomin kept pressing the staff to feed water to the reactor and transferred more people to Unit 4 to replace those being disabled by radiation.
The water flowed through the severed pipes into the lower levels of the plant, carrying radioactive debris and causing short circuits in the cableways.
Sam Troughton is Alexander Akimov – foreman for the fifth shift of reactor Unit Four.
Akimov wanted to shut down the test before the explosion but was overruled by Dyatlov.
It was Akimov who called for the AZ-5 button to be pushed and for all control rods to be inserted into the reactor which caused the explosion due to the design flaw.
Akimov couldn’t believe there had been an explosion and ordered futile attempts, hours later, to cool it.
Jessie Buckley is Lyudmyla Ignatenko – wife of firefighter Sergeant Vasily Ignatenko who was a member of third watch at Paramilitary Fire Station Number Six.
He was one of the first firefighters sent to the scene and suffered a lethal dose of radiation, dying a horrible death in Hospital Number 6 in Moscow.
Donald Sumpter is… - At this point his character is not known.
Ominously in the trailer he’s heard saying “Cut the phone lines, contain the spread of misinformation”.
The USSR went to desperate efforts to conceal the true horrors of Chernobyl, despite Mikhail Gorbachev’s Perestroika initiative at openness.
Sumpter lacks the distinctive birthmark to play Gorbachev himself and his role is not listed on IMDB.
Chernobyl arrives on Sky Atlantic on May 6 2019.
