I occasionally review movies here but don't get to as many as I once did. That's the price of work and also trying to do other recreational things within and outside the city. Time and a budget are always at a premium.
In the days of fewer channels, the shared experience of watching things together at the same time on TV or theatres was huge in its immediacy. Now, only live sports is that immediate. Video recording starting in the 1980s changed things a lot but it was more about the speed than total loss of immediacy. For example, recording TV usually meant you tried to watch the recorded program within a short timespan. The reasoning behind that was that blank tapes were not exactly cheap in the beginning.
TV series were rarely rented or sold on tape as they would take up so much space. I remember how the only video cassettes I often saw of series were Seinfelds.
Streaming has killed both the video rentals market as well as downloads. The only recordings people make now are with PVRs for TV. Even that is not really owned by you. It is digitally stored and has some limits. It can expire and delete. You can reach maximum amount of storage. It is not the same as having the movie or TV series in your hand. But then again people seem to have accepted that.
My big complaint about cable has been and still is that despite so many channels there is not as much international TV series or movies on it. Netflix and others in the never ending drive to feed content goes everywhere to find as well as fund it. And now other streamers are doing it too.
Truth be told the big studios and broadcasters are all reaching a convergence where they do everything from theatrical releases, DVDs, Video on Demand, network and cable, streaming and downloads. And working with partners to create bigger productions, shared budgets or access to other markets including broadcast and production.
HBO has become more than a premium cable channel. In Canada it is now an anchor for Crave TV in Canada for their streamer. Game of Thrones has been an important part of driving traffic to the channel in recent years. However, it is not the only quality program that has come from there. In some ways HBO originally faced the same accusation that it mostly made money from movie content produced by other studios including its own. If that was once true, it isn't the case now. They have produced their own material from all the way back to the 1980s. In 1983, they produced Fraggle Rock which was filmed in Canada in partnership with CBC.
Following Game of Thrones many wondered if HBO still had the chops to draw eyeballs to their network. That has proved true with Chernobyl.
Chernobyl
This is a five part mini-series based on the real event of the explosion in a nuclear plant in the USSR in 1986. It is by the far the scariest series I have ever seen. The first episode I could only take in short amounts. So deep was my sense of dread that I winced every time a decision was made that was truly and curled up in fear as it unfolded.
There has been a great deal made about how authentic the series is. Complaints and kudos are all over the place. The producers went to great lengths to tell the story and make it look and feel like 1986. However, it is a dramatization and some characters are a composite. And the dialogue is at best a guess as the interactions among the players.
While there is a large cast, there main focus is on three. The actors are Jared Harris, Stellan Skargard and Emily Watson. Essentially, the represent the political and scientific response to the nuclear disaster. Quite simply the performances by the stars is simply the best are are likely to be forgotten during award season.
As for the story, the first episode starts off with a bang and confusion and absolute terror. That horror comes from the fact that no one seems to know what happened or how bad it is. There is denial even as evidence of people being exposed to huge doses of radiation is exhibited. Once the extent of the continuing disaster happens, the story in future episodes tells what the response is in terms of evacuations, putting the fire out and the capping the damage.
The continued exposure and deaths of those responding to the crisis weighs even as the investigation goes on side by side of the response to the explosion. And throughout this, the oppressive and secret Soviet society denies, covers up or otherwise inhibits the truth until it threatens all the Soviet Union and Europe.
The final episode takes place in a court and re-creates how and why the explosion takes place. It is still frightening but intercut with explanations that make it more clinical. In the end, the story concludes with vignettes about the players in the story.
All in all it is great television. The best. I suspect the ending might have been more conclusive with an a death estimate but even now there is controversy in regards to it all in both the east and the west. Still, great television on a subject you would not expect such great writing and acting from.
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