Star City turns the space race into KGB dread

Set behind the “iron curtain,” Star City follows Soviet space workers under KGB surveillance as success on the Moon becomes only the start of interrogation rooms, loyalty tests, and paranoia about a leaked future moon base. Anna Maxwell Martin’s Lyudmilla—terr

By the time the words reach Earth, the room around them already feels like it’s tightening.

Star City takes the counterfactual question that defined For All Mankind—what if the Russians had landed first. and the space race never ended—and flips the lens from American triumph to life behind the “iron curtain.” In this version. the history is the same kind of lure. but the emotional physics are different. The denizens of Star City—an analogue to the USSR’s version of Cape Canaveral—celebrate a moment that. in For All Mankind. galvanised the US: Alexei Leonov walking on the moon and beaming a speech back to Earth about the tremendous benefits of “the Marxist-Leninist way of life”.

Except in Star City, the speech isn’t just a piece of propaganda delivered from a distance. It’s written and closely followed by the woman who controls what can be said—and what must never be questioned. Lyudmilla. played by Anna Maxwell Martin. is a colonel in the Great Patriotic War. with a rumour circulating in Star City that she killed more than a hundred Germans. and she is now head of KGB surveillance. She doesn’t allow celebration to feel clean.

After the mission’s success. the chief designer (Rhys Ifans) tries again to bring President Brezhnev into alignment with bigger plans: flying to Mars and Venus. But the State clamps down on diversifying when “American faces” are still expected to be grounded in “terrestrial mud.” The chief designer goes back to the next lunar mission. but his efforts never fully take hold. One cosmonaut. Yana (Niamh Algar). is deemed to have “transgressed against the State. ” and her replacement arrives after interrogation scenes that are harrowing without being gratuitous.

That replacement is Anastasia Belikova (Alice Englert), a far less qualified but more loyal party member. The programme’s machinery moves, but it does so on strings pulled tight by surveillance and fear.

New to the system is Irina (Agnes O’Casey). one of many typists set up in row upon immaculate row in a vast hall. Her days are spent transcribing the KGB’s covert home recordings of cosmonauts and engineers. It’s work that makes secrecy feel bureaucratic—and that’s part of the dread. Irina discovers that Yana has been wrongfully accused. She brings what she’s found to Lyudmilla. and the outcome is exactly what you’d expect: the power doesn’t soften.

In the short term, however, Irina benefits. Her aptitude impresses the colonel, and she’s adopted as a potential assistant as the team begins to search for the Russian mole that leaked plans for a future moon base to the Americans.

Star City refuses the glossy comfort some space stories start with. and it also avoids the soapiness that has sometimes tugged other entries. The stakes in the USSR don’t just feel higher. They feel inescapable. The fear and tension of living that vaunted Marxist-Leninist life are palpable in every scene. People are trapped; the only difference is whether they’ve learned to recognise the trap.

As the show layers daily compromises. doubts. stresses. accidental indiscretions (including catching sight of the cover of a top secret file on a superior’s desk). and insecurities stacked on top of one another. the anxiety never stays contained. When the story begins to braid these pressures into bigger. more nightmarish events. the escalation lands because it grows out of the characters’ limitations rather than arriving from nowhere.

Mines are laid more and more often. Anastasia, for instance, goes off-script during her speech back to Earth, acknowledging Yana’s contribution to the mission. The chief designer also confides to a colleague his plans to misappropriate lunar funds for his research into other interplanetary trips. Potentially fatal missteps aren’t rare setbacks; they’re the logical outcome of a world where every word is weighed. and where risk can only be minimized—not banished.

The result is a space race thriller that’s still interested in the “what if?”—and the fundamental premise remains intoxicating—but it’s equally intent on what the premise does to human nature. In the absence of trust, what people do to survive becomes part of the plot’s propulsion. What that stress costs them shows up in their choices. their betrayals. and the uneasy ways they look for freedom as the characters are allowed to become individuals rather than permanent ciphers.

Star City is on Apple TV.

Star City Apple TV Anna Maxwell Martin For All Mankind Ronald D. Moore KGB surveillance space race thriller Lyudmilla Brezhnev Alexei Leonov Yana Anastasia Belikova Irina