THE SPACE RACE between the United States and the Soviet Union is a really rich era to build a story around. Enter: For All Mankind, the Apple TV series that has been running since 2019 and which tells an alternate version of that story.

In that series, the Soviet Union is the first to get a man on the moon, and the US has to race to catch up.

Now from the For All Mankind stable comes Star City, which also looks at this imagined history but takes a different angle.

Here’s what you need to know about Star City, which begins streaming on Apple TV+ on Friday.

What’s it about?

To explain, we need to go to For All Mankind, which introduced us to the aforementioned alternate timeline in 1969, wherein the Soviet cosmonaut Alexei Leonov (a real person) became the first human to land on the Moon.

This, naturally enough, shocks the USA and kicks its own space exploration plans up a notch, and the series follows what happens next. For All Mankind has been telling this story across five seasons so far (some of which were more critically acclaimed than others), and a sixth is on the way.

Star City, meanwhile, is brand new and comes from the people who made For All Mankind (that would be Ben Nedivi, Matt Wolpert and Ronald D Moore). But this series specifically goes behind the Iron Curtain and focuses on the Soviet Union’s specific role in the space race.

What kind of vibe are we talking about here?

Well, if you’ve watched the trailer above, you can see it has very Cold War-era vibes, with muted colours and dramatic conversations.

Star City is being described by its creators as a “paranoid thriller”, and there is certainly more than a hint of the likes of The Conversation or The Parallax View about that trailer, indeed.

Here’s how Radio Times describes the show in its five-star review:

Set in the military town at the centre of the space race programme, the eight-part series gives a glimpse into the lives of the cosmonauts, engineers and intelligence officers risking everything by having their sights squarely set on the moon and beyond.

Who’s starring in it?

There’s a heap of great names here – like Rhys Ifans, who is almost unrecognisable as the Chief Designer, the main architect of the Soviet space programme.

Anna Maxwell Martin (getting a more serious role, though she is incredible in comedies like Motherland, too) is Lyudmilla Raskova, the head of the KGB surveillance department at Star City. Agnes O’Casey takes on the role of Irina Morozova (an older version of Morozova is played by Svetlana Efremova in For All Mankind), a KGB handler.

Says Radio Times:

Maxwell Martin and Ifans are two sides of the same coin: she is Colonel Lyudmilla Raskova, the ruthless head of KGB intelligence, tasked with uncovering any small act that may jeopardise the Soviet Union; he is the shadowy and nameless Chief Designer – the brains behind the space programme and the man who must remain shrouded in mystery.

Is it entirely fictional?

Excitingly, while it is a fictional series, it takes a lot from real life. Some parts are true, like how the Soviet Union ‘encouraged’ certain cosmonaut couples to marry. Then there are the stories of people like Valentina Tereshkova, who was the first woman on the moon. Her story is explored through a fictional character called Anastasia Belikova. 

And yes, the name of the show comes from real life – the home of the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Centre is called Star City.

It’s important to note, to,o that while this series is connected to For All Mankind, you don’t have to have watched that series to watch this one.

When can we watch it?

Star City begins streaming on AppleTV+ on Friday (29 May).