After five seasons of For All Mankind on Apple TV, the showrunners Moore, Wolper and Nedivi have produced an official spin-off.
It’s another space-race alternative history and Star City starts with the same premise: the Russians beat the Americans to a crewed landing on the Moon. But the similarities end there. This new series plots its own course as a paranoid spy thriller embedded in a counterfactual account of the 1970s Soviet space program.
The Russian “Chief Designer”, played by the underrated Rhys Ifens (channeling Max Von Sydow), pushes for a new, clandestine operation to send a crew of cosmonauts on a nine-month mission to Venus and rack up another space victory for the glory of Mother Russia.
The Americans have other ideas of course, and Star City spends almost as much time on spy craft as is does on space exploration. Le Carre’s “Moscow Rules” apply here and the malevolent Head of KGB surveillance Colonel Lyudmilla Rascova (the equally underrated Anna Maxwell Martin), holds command over the space scientists. She has to combat traitors and the dastardly Americans, with their CIA sponsored espionage, subterfuge and shadowy agents.
The grainy, gloomy cinematography and the totalitarian brutalist buildings of Star City give the series an unmistakable 1970s feel, reminiscent of the television adaptation of le Carre’s Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy. George Smiley would feel at home here.
It’s one of those series that gets better with each passing episode, and as the surveillance increases, so does the tension. Every character comes to feel they are being watched, and only one mistake will end their careers and maybe their lives. Things might turn worse at any moment; like the old 1970s saying “paranoia is true perception”.
Ryan Britt: “Sometimes, and this is a compliment, you forget this is a show about space travel…When Star City is at its best it’s a slow-burning spy show with the subject of optimism under extreme pressure.””
