Everyone is raving about Chernobyl as well, with many arguing that it is actually the best television series that has ever been produced – it even has the highest rating on IMDB ever – and people weren’t left disappointed by the end of the miniseries last night. Obviously the rest of this post is going to contain spoilers, so if you haven’t checked out the final episode yet then make sure you don’t bother reading anymore of this.

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OK so on your head be it. The final episode saw Valery Legasov (Jared Harris), Boris Shcherbina (Stellan Skarsgård) and Ulana Khomyuk (Emily Watson) risk their lives and reputations to expose the truth about the real life nuclear disaster and following its conclusion, series creator Craig Mazin has decided to share some of his motivations for key decisions and lines in the script.

You may have noticed that ‘the cost of lies’ was a line that featured in both the first and final scene of the series and Mazin has revealed why he chose to base the series around this motif:

Well, we are experiencing something now that I used to think was mostly just a phenomenon in a place like the Soviet Union, which is a disconnection from truth.

And the emergence of a cult of personality. And a distrust and debasement of experts who don’t go along with whatever the official narrative is.

It’s so upsetting, and we don’t know quite how to handle it. What I want people to consider is that no matter what it is we want to believe, and no matter what story it is we want to jam the world into, the truth is the truth.

If you organise your life around some political party’s list of things you should believe, or an individual that you think is going to come and save you, you are disconnecting yourself from truth. And there is a price to pay.

We live on a planet that is under threat, and scientists are warning us, just as they did in the ’70s regarding RBMK reactors in the Soviet Union.

Governments are choosing to listen or not listen, and people are choosing to listen or not listen. But the truth, the globe, the thermometer, doesn’t care. And the RBMK didn’t care either. It didn’t matter what they wanted to do that night.

It didn’t matter that the fatal flaw of the RBMK reactor was a state secret. The reactor didn’t care. And that’s the problem we struggle with. We are attempting to make ourselves superior to fact, and we are not.

Any idea who/what he’s on about there? I’ll let you make your own mind up at the risk of being called a lefty liberal snowflake in the comments (again) but it seems pretty obvious to me. I doubt a guy who made a TV show is going to change the mind’s of some of the most powerful people in the world, but at least when the world is flooded and we can no longer survive he can say I told you so, you should have listened. Not sure what good that’s gonna do him, but I guess he might enjoy it at least.

For more of the same, check out how you can visit Chernobyl now. Not sure if it’s that good an idea, but you know, putting it out there.