Apple TV+ released Star City on May 29, 2026. The show is a spinoff of the popular space drama For All Mankind. Instead of following the American space program, this new series looks at the Soviet side of the race to the Moon. The first two episodes dropped together, setting up a world of paranoia, control, and high-stakes space travel. The series has already earned strong reviews, with an 83% positive score on Metacritic from 12 critic reviews.
The show takes place in the 1970s in an alternate history where the Soviet Union landed the first man on the Moon. Now the Soviets want another win: putting the first woman on the lunar surface. But behind the scenes, the KGB controls everything, and one wrong word can destroy a person’s life. The premiere episodes introduced three main storylines involving a young cosmonaut, a terrifying KGB boss, and a brilliant but flawed engineer.
Anna Maxwell Martin’s Lyudmilla Rules With Fear
Anna Maxwell Martin plays Lyudmilla Raskova, the head of the KGB surveillance department at Star City. She is cold, calculating, and completely unforgiving. Critics have called her performance “terrifying”. Lyudmilla does not care about the space program or the people running it. She only cares about how the world sees the Soviet Union.
The premiere showed Lyudmilla making two brutal decisions. First, she removed Yana Akhmatova (Niamh Algar) from the Moon mission at the last minute. The reason? Yana had a brother who wrote for an underground magazine. It did not matter that Yana had lost that brother when he was just one year old. The KGB decided she was a risk, so she was out. Second, when Lyudmilla learned that Yana was actually innocent, she did not free her. Instead, she ordered her killed to cover up the mistake. She forced a new recruit, Irina Morozova (Agnes O’Casey), to pull the trigger.
“The KGB could never make any mistake and therefore there was no question of releasing Yana. So, they had to kill her to cover up their mistake.”
Lyudmilla views every person as a tool. She does not see cosmonauts as heroes. She sees them as assets that must perform perfectly or be discarded. This creates the main tension of the show. The space program wants to push boundaries, but the KGB wants total control.
Anastasia Belikova’s Rebellion and Punishment
Alice Englert plays Anastasia Belikova, an untested female cosmonaut chosen to replace Yana. The Chief Designer (Rhys Ifans) did not want her. He had only three days to prepare her for the mission. Her co-pilot Valya Mironov (Adam Nagaitis) also refused to accept her. He reminded her constantly that she did not deserve to be there.
Anastasia was trained to follow orders without question. The KGB gave her a speech to memorize. She was supposed to read it live from the Moon to the entire world. But when she landed and looked at her reflection on the lunar surface, something changed. She thought about all the women who made her journey possible. She went off-script and thanked Yana by name. She also delivered a short speech about feminism.
Lyudmilla was furious. She ordered the broadcast cut off immediately. Back on Earth, the KGB threatened to erase Anastasia from history. Another woman who looked like her was already waiting to replace her. Anastasia apologized and promised to obey, so she was given another chance. But Lyudmilla did not forgive. She had a different punishment planned.
Anastasia was told she would go on a world tour to celebrate her achievement. But she could not represent Soviet women as a single person. So the KGB arranged a marriage for her to Sasha Polivanov (Solly McLeod), a reckless cosmonaut who had not yet lived up to his potential. Neither of them wanted the marriage. Sasha was having an affair with Tanya, Valya’s wife. But both understood they had no real choice.
The marriage happened at the end of Episode 1. Episode 2 showed Anastasia and Sasha on their tour in Paris. They started as strangers forced together, but they slowly formed a friendship. Anastasia confessed to Sasha that going to the Moon taught her what freedom could look like. Now she feels trapped. She wonders if ignorance was better.
Irina Morozova’s Dark Awakening
Agnes O’Casey plays Irina Morozova, a new recruit to the KGB surveillance department. Viewers of For All Mankind know her as an older, tougher character in later seasons. But in Star City, she is young and still learning. She starts the premiere as a quiet woman who transcribes conversations. She discovers that Yana is innocent. She thinks she is doing the right thing by bringing the evidence to Lyudmilla.
Instead of a reward, Lyudmilla handed her a gun and told her to shoot Yana. Irina could not do it at first. But Lyudmilla did not flinch. Eventually, Irina pulled the trigger. The look on her face showed that something inside her broke. Later, Lyudmilla sent her to Paris to spy on Anastasia. Then she took her to Berlin to interrogate a prisoner. Irina is slowly becoming a darker version of herself.
Sergei Nikulov Shows His Genius
Josef Davies plays Sergei Nikulov, a young engineer at Soviet Ground Control. In For All Mankind, Sergei dies in season four. But here, he is alive and just starting his career. During Anastasia’s Moon landing, her suit filled with too much CO2. Mission control panicked. Sergei suggested poking a hole in the suit to release the gas. It was dangerous, but it worked.
The Chief Designer noticed Sergei’s quick thinking. This moment plants the seeds for Sergei’s future in the space program. It also gives viewers a direct link to the parent show. Sergei’s journey from a young engineer to a key figure in the Soviet space program will likely play out over the season.
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Critical Reception and Streaming Details
Star City has received mostly positive reviews. Variety gave it a perfect 100 score, calling it “an intense, immaculate paranoid thriller”. The Guardian gave it 80, noting that the show has “none of the glossy blandness that For All Mankind did at the beginning”. The Hollywood Reporter also gave it 80, saying it posits “a much darker vision” that fits the current national mood. Some critics found the large cast hard to follow. The A.V. Club gave it 67, saying the show sometimes plays things “too straight”. User reviews are more mixed, with some calling the show boring and full of filler.
All eight episodes of Season 1 will release weekly on Apple TV+. New episodes arrive every Friday. The finale is scheduled for July 10, 2026. An Apple TV+ subscription costs $12.99 per month after a 7-day free trial.
The cast also includes Ruby Ashbourne Serkis as Tanya Mironova, Priya Kansara as Lakshmi, and David Dencik as Maxim Tarasov.
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