Chernobyl HBO Miniseries

Are there non-English actors using English accents?

 

I'd personally prefer if they'd used Russian actors and subtitles but realise this probably isn't going to make it an attractive watch for many in the (probably) target market for the show. One thing that struck me though was that the senior staff seemed to have quite posh southern English accents and the some of the more manual "workers" - i.e. the fire fighters - had gritty northern accents. This is a very common stereotype, and I can think of similar cases in Game of Thrones and other shows.

 

English accents seem to be the standard in these situations. Not sure how that happened but it happens a lot.

 

the guardian is my choice for news, but when it comes to entertainment reviews i largely roll my eyes. they don't seem to put a lot of effort in. i was at no point confused by this episode. any confusion i felt was by way of looking through the eyes of the characters. it was gut wrenching.

i get this, but i think the point is that since this was a british production they opted to just speak with their normal voices. i don't believe there are americans portraying russians with british accents.

 

That's really strange they would say that, There's not much to be confused about. They did a test that went horribly wrong and they at first didn't believe how bad the explosion was and by the end the realized it was REALLY bad.

Sorry am I giving away spoilers on how Chernobyl turned out? Bad joke sorry.

 

USE THE SPOILER TAG NEXT TIME!!

 

Loved this, thought the first episode was incredibly well done and very frightening and harrowing. As for the accents, after a moment of thinking "hmm, they have English accents" I never thought about it again, whereas if they were all speaking English with Russian accents I'd have spent the whole time noticing how good, or more likely bad they were. A great artistic choice as far as I'm concerned. Can't wait for the next episode.

 

I haven't seen this yet but I think you've got a good point there. Either do it right or don't do it at all. 10 or 20 years back there were lots of spy movies and thrillers taking place in Berlin or East Germany where the main character or even the villains spoke German. Well, they tried. My brother and I often laughed at scenes that weren't supposed to be funny at all because it was all terribly wrong.

I think that nowadays more emphasis is being put on the language aspect because more and more people are used to or getting used to watching films and TV series with subtitles. It think it just adds authenticity which can make it so much more fun to follow. For example, I was really surprised how well Rosamund Pike spoke German in "Entebbe". I do like multi-lingual aspects in movies very much. I grew up with synchronized movies and mostly everyone was speaking German even if it didn't make any sense because in the original there was a language barrier that was part of the movie. "The third man" is an example where Holly Martins often has problems with the German language. This aspect was eradicated in the German synchronization. I also love when several different languages meet and someone has to translate or they all are trying hard to understand one another.

To be fair, this can't always be perfect and you only know if you are speaking a language as well. In "The Looming Tower" French actor Tahar Rahim who plays Ali Soufan supposedly speaks Arabic fluently but I read that he learned all the lines with a coach. Very convincing but of course I don't really know.

 

HBO has another miniseries on called "Gentleman Jack".
I'm sure it would 'jolt' people out of the story to hear the character say,
"HEY! YO! How you DOO-win? I'm Miss Lista, over here!"

 

Maybe if this were a movie, I'd expect Russian to be used, but this an HBO/Sky series. I'm fairly certain they've done their homework on subtitles vs. non-subtitles, English vs. Russian, etc and how that would affect total viewership. HBO/Sky are businesses that deal in entertainment and I'm thinking that having non-Russian speaking viewers read subtitles for an hour an episode would hurt viewership.

I paid nearly no mind to the fact that dialog was in English. Heck, I didn't even notice that the English was spoken in a British accent. I just sat back and enjoyed this amazing first episode.

 

That is exactly what Phil Tate said and what I think is totally fine. I have to say that before watching films in the original version I saw many movies where some characters had a Russian or Eastern European accent. It often sounded ridiculous. So like you and Phil said, it was made for an English speaking audience with great actors (I just noticed that Jarred Harris is the one from "The Terror" and "Mad Men"), nothing to complain.

Never heard about that one. I guess they speak with British accent then.

 

Dick Van Dyke.

And Chris Pine recently played a Scottish king.

 

I just assumed, with all these British actors being praised for their American accents.....
the 'challenge' would be the thing......

 

In this show or in movies in general? If you mean this show, no. In other shows, yes, of course.

 

I’m just wondering what exactly is the complaint. Is it that the cast aren’t all affecting Russian accents, or that the show is using a British cast, because if you’d be OK with all American accents, then it seems to be the latter.

 

i'm slightly confused myself. i think it's just that folks would prefer a russian accent at the very least in lieu of british. some may still not realize these are actual british folks.

 

Episode 2 was also excellent...….I really enjoy historical time pieces, and this one has not disappointed.

 

Another great episode, through I am confused as to why the helicopter that flew over the core broke apart.

 

I assume metal starts to disintegrate when you're too close.....

 

It was shot with a billion trillion tiny bullets?

 

still very much enjoying the show, but starting to feel like they didn't have a 100% clear idea of how they wanted to tackle this subject with all of its moving parts and size. i'm really surprised that the whole evacuation of pripyat (where is the ferris wheel?!) was more of a montage, especially since we were reminded of the importance of such a task several times via the dialog.

also somewhat goofy was skarsgard's quick reduction to a sad face and grunts. and i love harris, but man he was a little too hysterical at points. wasn't sure how i'd feel about watson but she's delivering as a more grounded character between those two.

those are my nitpicks.

 

In real life, the helicopter that crashed at Cernobyl hit one of the crane wires that were surrounding the reactor.

 

I'm really enjoying this series and am not bothered at all by the English accents. One minor point for me, In the first episode it literally goes to the reactor explosion in the first minutes of the program. There isn't any set-up. I searched online and found that they were conducting a test or drill at the plant when something went wrong, causing the reactor to explode, and no one could believe the thing had actually exploded. A little heads-up would have helped IMO.

 

In the podcast they talk about this decision - they wanted to drop people in without warning. However they also said the buildup will be covered somewhat in a later episode...

 

Another terrific episode. I'm thoroughly enjoying this series, it's incredibly well-done and genuinely frightening. There's a real sense of dread over the whole thing, combined with the cold, grey, matter-of-fact look of it, which makes me feel constantly uneasy and on-edge in the same way as the terrifying episode 8 of Twin Peaks The Return. Lots of chilling touches like the reference to something that has "never happened before on this planet". And the way the authorities just denied it was happening - not even covering it up, just outright denying it, like "no, you haven't seen that, it's not possible" - is staggering, and terrifyingly familiar in this age of "alternative facts".