HBO’s Chernobyl is now the highest-rated TV show of all-time on IMDB, it has been revealed.
The series, which tells the story of the 1986 nuclear disaster near Pripyat in the Ukraine, began airing last month and was shown on Sky Atlantic in the UK.
Now, days after the mini-series finished, it has taken the top spot on IMDB’s all-time TV rankings. At the time of writing, it has a user score of 9.7 out of 10 and has been rated by over 170,000 viewers.
That mark places it above Breaking Bad, Planet Earth II, and Band Of Brothers, all of which scored 9.5. It also beat the likes of the original Planet Earth (9.4), Game Of Thrones (9.3), and The Wire (9.3).
Chernobyl was directed by Breaking Bad’s Johan Renck and was created, written, and executive produced by Craig Mazin (The Huntsman: Winter’s War). It stared Jared Harris (The Crown, The Curious Case Of Benjamin Button) as a Soviet nuclear physicist, Stellan Skarsgård (Good Will Hunting) as the Soviet Deputy Prime Minister, and Jessie Buckley (Taboo) as the wife of a firefighter called to the nuclear power plant.
Earlier this week, it was reported that, despite the show’s high IMDB rating, some viewers in Russia were not fans. A Russian-made TV series based on the disaster is now being planned by filmmaker Alexei Muradov.
The director told The Moscow Times his version would focus on the theory the CIA infiltrated the Chernobyl power plant. “Many historians do not deny that, on the day of the explosion, an agent of the enemy’s intelligence services was present at the station,” he said.