Mental Floss

Chernobyl Passes Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, and More to Become IMDb's Top-Rated Show

By Hannah Wigandt

Liam Daniel, HBO
Liam Daniel, HBO / Liam Daniel, HBO
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Has HBO already found its new Game of Thrones? Not quite, but shortly after the epic series concluded its eighth and final season, it appears it already has a new competitor for the best show in history. After only four episodes, CinemaBlend reports that the network’s new limited series Chernobyl has landed the highest spot on IMDb’s 250 Top-Rated TV Shows, beating out some incredibly famous series.

Chernobyl has earned an impressive 9.6 rating on the site, racing past such critically acclaimed shows and miniseries as Game of Thrones, Breaking Bad, Band of Brothers, The Wire, and The Sopranos. The top 25 spots currently stand as follows:

  1. Chernobyl: 9.6
  2. Planet Earth II: 9.5
  3. Band of Brothers: 9.4
  4. Planet Earth: 9.4
  5. Breaking Bad: 9.4
  6. Game of Thrones: 9.4
  7. The Wire: 9.3
  8. Our Planet: 9.3
  9. Cosmos (2014): 9.2
  10. Blue Planet II: 9.2
  11. Cosmos (1980): 9.2
  12. Rick and Morty: 9.2
  13. The Sopranos: 9.1
  14. The World at War: 9.1
  15. Avatar: The Last Airbender: 9.1
  16. Life: 9.1
  17. Sherlock: 9.1
  18. The Vietnam War: 9.0
  19. The Twilight Zone: 9.0
  20. Human Planet: 9.0
  21. Dekalog: 9.0
  22. The Civil War: 9.0
  23. Firefly: 9.0
  24. Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood: 9.0
  25. True Detective: 9.0

The new HBO series is based on the catastrophic real-life nuclear disaster that occurred on April 26, 1986 at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant. Although it doesn’t exactly follow the true events, the show has received rave reviews right off the bat.

Apart from the fact that the series most likely has such a high rating because there aren’t as many reviews on IMDb for it as there are for older shows, it's high ranking could stick for a while because it is a miniseries. While divisive series like Game of Thrones, which aired for eight years, had more opportunity for failure, Chernobyl has less room to receive lower scores since it’s much shorter. The series just has to continue to perform for the remaining episode, and its rating might not drop much.

HBO will air the finale of Chernobyl on Monday, June 3.

[h/t CinemaBlend]

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