The show starts with the main character Legasov beginning with his suicide

The show starts with the main character Legasov beginning with his suicide and him recording himself telling the story, showing us this event largely through the eyes of someone who eventually killed himself because of it, sets the tone throughout the show.One of the things that make the Chernobyl miniseries so powerful is its use of perspective. Chernobyl chooses a more subjective approach to telling its story using the perspective of individuals in a lot of scenes. Throughout the first episode the perspective shifts in each scene usually to the person in that scene that is encountering the disaster for the first time we see the disaster first from the perspective of the plant workers as they deal with the initial fallout from the political characters perspective as they learn about the disaster as the firefighters on-site the show shifts to the perspective of an individual firefighter as he’s awoken and arrived at the disaster but when the firefighters are taken to the hospital we see that scene from a perspective of a single nurse being awoken and seeing the effects of the disaster for the first time The beginning of the show is not a nice wide shot of the power plant, the focus of the show is some apartment buildings in Pripyat, the scene focuses on a character experiencing the explosion from her perspective. In the control room: slow-motion, sound design and tight constricting cinematography keep the viewer focused on the operators and their emotional state and reaction. This kind of subjective perspective is not always the right choice for a story, more subjective cinematography writing and editing can also be used for a powerful effect, but I think Chernobyl made the right choice here to maximize the dramatic impact of a story many of us already know some details about. Chernobyl is one of the most effective shows or films I’ve seen at conveying a sense of despair and doom. Its use of prospective place us right alongside characters as they feel those things are an important part of its success.