Pretty Much Pop: A Culture Podcast #4 — HBO’s “Chernobyl”: Why Do We Enjoy Watching Suffering?

On the HBO mini-series Cher­nobyl. Mark Lin­sen­may­er, Eri­ca Spyres, and Bri­an Hirt first get into the var­i­ous degrees of loose­ness in something’s being “based on a true sto­ry.” Does it mat­ter if it’s been changed to be more dra­mat­ic? We then con­sid­er the show as enter­tain­ment: Why do peo­ple enjoy wit­ness­ing suf­fer­ing? Why might a dra­ma work (or not) for you?

We also touch on Game of Thrones, The Killing, God Is Dead, It’s Always Sun­ny in Philadel­phia, Big Lit­tle Lies, Schindler’s List, Vice, Ip Man, and more.

Some of the arti­cles we looked at to pre­pare:

• “HBO’s Cher­nobyl Isn’t Just His­tor­i­cal Dra­ma, It’s Straight-Up Hor­ror” by Renal­do Matadeen
• “Top UCLA Doc­tor Denounces HBO’s “Cher­nobyl” As Wrong And “Dan­ger­ous” by Michael Shel­len­berg­er
• “What HBO’s ‘Cher­nobyl’ Got Right, and What It Got Ter­ri­bly Wrong” by Masha Gessen
• “What Watch­ing “Mis­ery Porn” Shows Like ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’ Does To Your Men­tal Health” by Louisa Ball­haus
• “The Mis­ery Porn of Game of Thrones Isn’t Pro­found. It’s Just Mis­er­able” by Sam Brooks
• The TV Tropes page for “Based on a True Sto­ry”

Our Lucy Law­less inter­view will be out next week! Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is a mem­ber of the The Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Pod­cast Net­work.

Get more at prettymuchpop.com. Sub­scribe on Apple Pod­casts, Stitch­er, or Google Play. Pret­ty Much Pop: A Cul­ture Pod­cast is pro­duced by the Par­tial­ly Exam­ined Life Pod­cast Net­work. This episode includes bonus con­tent that you can only hear by sup­port­ing the pod­cast at patreon.com/prettymuchpop.