Russia Despises Highest-Rated US TV Show in History, Launches ‘Crusade’ Against It

Russia Despises Highest-Rated US TV Show in History, Launches ‘Crusade’ Against It Russia plans to produce its own TV version of the 1986 Chernobyl disaster in response to the HBO series that is drawing rave reviews in America and criticism in Russia. The Russian response to HBO’s dramatization of the Chernobyl nuclear reactor meltdown in Ukraine series is sponsored by the network NTV, which the Russian natural gas firm Gazprom owns, according to The Hollywood Reporter. Russia’s culture ministry, which has chipped in about $460,000, will partially back the new series, according to The Reporter. Russia’s efforts to have the last word come as “Chernobyl” currently sits atop the Internet Movie Database’s website as the top-rated TV show of all time with a 9.7 rating. But according to Ilya Seplin, who wrote about the series in an Op-Ed in The Moscow Times, things are different in Russia, where “the pro-Kremlin media have launched a mini-crusade against it.” Seplin said the Russian response to the HBO series will even have a Cold War theme of spy vs. spy. He wrote that the Russian series will be “based on the premise that the CIA sent an agent to the Chernobyl zone to carry out acts of sabotage.”