For one of the classes I'm TAing this semester, CTCS 191, I watched the entirety of Chernobyl, which like virtually all TV shows I avoided seeing during its acclaimed run. I had seen the first episode in Norris Cinema Theatre during lecture and found it fairly standard, but was mildly intrigued to view further. A few weeks later, just after the end of spring break, when quarantine was in full effect, I watched the other four episodes over that Monday afternoon/night and Tuesday morning. While I will admit that there was an extra resonance given, as noted by many rewatching the series, I generally found that the effect of binging such a volume of turgid historical drama overrode those wider concerns. Maybe it was because of the enforced sense of "presentness" that the creators of the show seemed hellbent on reinforcing that there was a sense of resistance on my part, refusing to allow the specter of mismanagement in the present to overtly affect my reception of its past counterpart.
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