How to Watch "Chernobyl" In Australia

If you’re wondering what all the fuss is about, strap in for a history lesson you won’t forget.

According to the users of IMDB, the best TV show of all time isn’t Breaking Bad, or The Wire, or Game of Thrones or even (and this may shock you) the YouTube-only series Cobra Kai.

Nope. On IMDB’s list of Top Rated TV Shows, Breaking Bad comes in at #5, Game of Thrones and The Wire land at #6 and #7 respectively, and Cobra Kai sits, inexplicably, at #60. (For reference, The Simpsons is #67. What is up with the Cobra Kai hive? Should we be watching Cobra Kai??)

The top rated TV show, per IMDB, is HBO and Sky Atlantic’s devastating historical miniseries Chernobyl, which just wrapped up its five-episode run internationally and is now airing in Australia.

It’s not just beloved on IMDB. Critics on Rotten Tomatoes have given it 96 per cent, and Instagrammers have been inspired to tour the wreckage of the fallen city (though 'grammers using the nuclear disaster site for 'likes' have been asked to keep it respectful).

The show dramatises an unimaginable disaster: the collapse of a nuclear reactor at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in the Ukraine. The unprecedented accident occurred in 1986, heralding the dying days of the Soviet Union. As the series demonstrates, the government of the time attempted to mask the seriousness of the incident, denying its very possibility, even as first-responders became dangerously afflicted, and others began displaying cancerous symptoms in the years that followed.

Chernobyl stars Jared Harris and Emily Watson as the scientists trying to halt the leak, while Stellan Skarsgård plays a Communist leader learning the true cost of his party’s fabrication of the truth. Series writer Craig Mazin (formerly of The Hangover Part 2 and… The Hangover Part 3) has been criticised for taking some creative licence with the true story, but many have celebrated the show for its authentic production design, and for cutting to the heart of this incredible tale. In 2019, Chernobyl is most resonant as a climate change parable, in which the powers that be stare extinction in the face and continue to deny the likely consequences of their denial.

It also, in its final episode, explains in the cleanest language we’ve ever heard how, exactly, a nuclear reactor works. Learn while you watch!

(Don’t be fooled by IMDB’s average score of 9.6/10 though. Not everyone’s a fan. Like Russia, whose state TV has produced their own show blaming a CIA plant for orchestrating the disaster.)

"Okay already, I’m sold! Just tell me where and when I can watch it," I hear you screaming.

Well, first, the great news: all five episodes of Chernobyl are already available to stream on Foxtel Now in Australia.

However, if you don’t feel as if you’re able to binge-watch it in one sitting (given the gore, and the grave nature of the subject matter, we don’t blame you) watch it week by week on Fox Showcase. Individual episodes are being rolled out each Wednesday at 8:30pm AEST.

If you’ve felt left out of the conversation, catch up now, and add your vote to IMDB.