Paul Ritter

In the control room in Chernobyl (2019), Paul Ritter’s Anatoly Dyatlov hears the building come apart and insists that a tank has burst. He orders water pumped into a core that no longer exists, then sends men to inspect the damage. Ritter plays each instruction as something Dyatlov needs to believe, because acknowledging the disaster would threaten the career on which his authority rests. We were angry watching him send those men, because he makes a terrible order seem like an ordinary part of the working day. This is an excellent performance of a man treating a threat to his career as the most urgent problem he faces.

Ritter had worked extensively with the RSC and National Theatre before screen parts began accumulating in the early 2000s. Eldred Worple in Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009) brought him to a large audience, but television gave him the recurring role of Martin Goodman in Friday Night Dinner (2011–2020). Alongside Tamsin Greig, he played the eccentric, often shirtless father, a rather different prospect from Dyatlov in the control room. It is tempting to make the distance between the two parts the whole story. We are more interested in his willingness to play uncomfortable company without making the character easier to like.

In Craig Mazin and Johan Renck’s Chernobyl, that willingness gives a plainly culpable man enough vulnerability to remain human, without reducing his responsibility for the orders he gives. Ritter does not need to shout to make the authority felt; the certainty of those instructions is what makes them frightening. The series explains itself once too often towards the end, and his work in the first hour makes that extra explanation seem less necessary still. He has already shown us why this man keeps rejecting what is happening in front of him. Start with Chernobyl, and do not expect a restful evening.