Review | What to stream this weekend: Netflix drama The Days paints a vivid picture of Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster, its heroes and incompetent officials
- The Days shows the inept Japanese power company bosses, the incompetent politicians and the heroes who risked their lives to avert nuclear meltdown in 2011
- Meanwhile on HBO Go’s The Idol, The Weeknd and Lily-Rose Depp tell the old story of a music business Svengali exploiting a vulnerable rising star
As governments globally continue to play nuclear roulette with ageing power stations, so long as we’re not downwind of lethal radiation clouds we can expect more dramas like The Days (Netflix).
Recounting the harrowing events of the week after the dual assault on the Fukushima nuclear power station by the earthquake and tsunami of March 2011, the eight-part series is what might be called, according to the cliché du jour, “binary”.
On one hand we have the dithering bosses of power company Tepco, plan-less when up against cataclysm. They are abetted in their incompetence by a gang of government flunkeys prostrating themselves to frustrated prime minister Naoto Kan (Fumiyo Kohinata), who wants answers and action, not red tape and indecision.
The politicians, like generations of frontline-dodging generals before them, comically dress in pseudo-battle fatigues.
Then there are the heroes: Tepco employees and volunteers doing the dangerous grunt work of entering the damaged nuclear reactor buildings to try to avert a catastrophic meltdown.
