Chernobyl trailer: HBO drama is a disturbing dramatisation of nuclear disaster

Stellan Skarsgård, Emily Watson, Jared Harris, Jessie Buckley, and Barry Keoghan all star

The trailer for the new Sky Atlantic/HBO drama Chernobyl revisits the devastating nuclear disaster of 1986.

An explosion during a routine late-night safety test led to plumes of radioactive material pouring into the sky at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant, located near Pripyat, approximately 104km north of Kiev.

134 servicemen were hospitalised with acute radiation sickness, of which 28 firemen and employees died in the weeks and months after the explosion.

The new drama aims to underline the horrors of nuclear radiation, while following those who were caught up in the tragedy and those who were tasked with containing it.

Stellan Skarsgård, Emily Watson, Jared Harris, Jessie Buckley, and Barry Keoghan all star.

Skarsgård plays Boris Shcherbina, a government official who oversaw the Kremlin’s commission on Chernobyl, while Watson plays Ulana Khomyuk, a nuclear physicist tasked with discovering the cause of the blast.

The miniseries is directed Breaking Bad‘s Johan Renck and written by The Huntsman: Winter’s War‘s Craig Mazin.

Chernobyl will premiere on Tuesday, 7 May on Sky Atlantic and will stream on NOW TV.