Chernobyl (2019)

Five episodes, and the first one alone usually settles the argument. Craig Mazin's 2019 drama about the 1986 reactor disaster plays like a thriller about lying: officials deny what the instruments are telling them while scientists try to get the truth heard. Jared Harris, Stellan Skarsgård and Emily Watson anchor it without star turns, and the dread builds through sound and silence rather than spectacle. It is a dramatization rather than a documentary, and the scenes of radiation sickness are hard to watch. Choose it for someone who reads narrative history.