by Jason Snell
“Star City” premieres on Apple TV
“Star City,” Apple TV’s “For All Mankind” spin-off, has just premiered. I’ve seen the first five episodes and really like it. It’s accessible even if you haven’t seen “For All Mankind” or if you’ve stopped watching that show.
“Star City” is set in the same world as “For All Mankind,” but it’s told from the perspective of the Soviet Union during the height of the space race in the late 1960s and early 1970s, just after the USSR has landed the first people on the moon. Rhys Ifans is great as the enigmatic Chief Designer who runs the space program, and Anna Maxwell Martin is menacing as Lyudmilla, the head of Star City’s security. (“For All Mankind” fans will notice much younger versions of a few familiar characters from the Soviet side, too.)
The whole show is about space, sure, but it’s also a cold war spy thriller set in a locked-down secret city in the heart of the Soviet Union. There are space heroics, bugged apartments, mysterious contacts, forbidden books, and even smuggled rock and roll records.
Dan Moren and I are covering each episode over at The Incomparable as a part of our NASA Vending Machine podcast. The first two episodes of “Star City” are available now, as are our podcasts covering those first two episodes.