Russian state TV is working on its own version of Chernobyl, a series based on the worst nuclear accident in history.
Jared Harris and Stellan Skarsgård in Chernobyl Photo: HBO
The NTV drama will deviate from the acclaimed HBO series - and from historical reality - by claiming that the CIA was involved in the disaster.
Director Aleksey Muradov claims it will show "what really happened back then".
HBO's miniseries, which concluded on Monday, received the highest ever score for a TV show on IMdB, as well as a 9.1 rating on Russian equivalent Kinopoisk.
But in an interview with Komsomolskaya Pravda, Russia's most widely-read tabloid, Mr Muradov said his version of the show "proposes an alternative view on the tragedy in Pripyat".
"There is a theory that Americans infiltrated the Chernobyl nuclear power plant," he told the paper. "Many historians do not rule out the possibility that on the day of the explosion, an agent of the enemy's intelligence services was working at the station."
The Hollywood Reporter reports that the Russian culture ministry has contributed 30 million rubles ($NZ694,685) to the show.
A reactor at the Chernobyl nuclear plant exploded on 26 April 1986 in the Ukrainian city of Pripyat.
At least 31 people were killed in the immediate aftermath, and the effects continue to be felt to this day.
The show has been particularly unpopular with Russian state TV and the country's tabloid newspapers.
Speaking to TV website Teleprogramma, columnist Anatoly Wasserman said: "If Anglo-Saxons film something about Russians, it definitely will not correspond to the truth."
This, he continued, was because "they don't like us" and "they cannot understand us".
Komsomolskaya Pravda published several negative articles about the show - including one floating a conspiracy theory that it was produced by competitors of Rosatom, Russia's state nuclear company, to ruin the country's reputation as a nuclear power.
But reviewers in independent media outlets praised its writer Craig Mazin for his minute attention to detail.
Slava Malamud, a US-based journalist who grew up during the Soviet era in what is now Moldova, wrote on the independent Russian news site Meduza that "the respect and meticulousness the show's creators brought to their work is breathtaking".
"Like I see the licence plate for a car in one scene has the real numbers for the [Kiev] region," he said.
"Who's going to notice that in America or England?"
- BBC