Chernobyl TV drama starts filming in Lithuania

The star-studded TV drama Chernobyl has begun shooting in Lithuania.

Directed by Sweden’s Johan Renck, the five-part miniseries is about the devastating aftermath of the 1986 nuclear disaster.

British actor Jared Harris will play the role of Valery Legasov, the Kremlin-picked Soviet scientist who investigated the accident. He’ll be joined on screen by Stellan Skarsgård as the head of the Soviet Fuel and Energy Bureau and actress Emily Watson as a physicist tasked with solving the scientific mystery behind the disaster.

The $250 million production, backed by HBO and the UK’s Sky Television, is a major win for the Lithuanian government, which has been offering financial incentives for international film makers.

“The miniseries is a tale of lies and cowardice, of courage and conviction, of human failure and human nobility,” HBO said. “[It] focuses on the heartbreaking scope of the CHERNOBYL–2 nuclear plant disaster that occurred in Ukraine in April 1986, revealing how and why it happened, and telling the shocking, remarkable stories of the heroes who fought and fell.”