Chernobyl review – chaos reigns in confusing nuclear disaster epic

With Jared Harris starring, this miniseries about the 1986 meltdown should be gripping - but instead strands viewers in a bewildering cloud of unanswered questions

Chernobyl is like the 80s nuclear horror-drama Threads crossed with the disaster-movie classic The Towering Inferno - but delivers neither the shocking realism of one nor the schlocky flair of the other. Sky Atlantic's five-part miniseries (co-produced with HBO) dramatises the 1986 disaster at the nuclear power station in what is now Ukraine.

It is - at least so far - a confusing sprawl for anyone not au fait with the details of the catastrophe itself, the workings of nuclear reactors generally, or with a very good eye for faces obscured by dust and smoke, and a knack for remembering complicated names drowned out by the sound of reactor cores exploding.