Sci-fi thriller spin-off starring British icon already hailed ‘best drama of the year’

If there’s one thing Apple TV Plus can be relied upon for, it’s delivering some of the best dramas ever with a star-studded cast and very little fanfare.

Severance, Your Friends and Neighbours, Widow’s Bay, Slow Horses – need I go on? Whatever the genre, the streaming service is dropping prestige TV that will have you hooked like it’s going out of style.

One of its most popular sci-fi dramas in years gone by is For All Mankind, a Cold War space race thriller about what would have happened if the Soviet Union had landed on the moon first in 1969.

With the hit show returning for a sixth and final season, fans may have been worried they were losing their space race fix. But worry not, because a new spin-off delving into the USSR’s perspective has just launched – and it’s reaching for the stars.

Star City – from the same creators Ronald D Moore, Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert – stars Motherland icon Anna Maxwell Martin as the tougher-than-nails head of the KGB surveillance Lyudmilla.

The series also features Rhys Ifans, the enigmatic brains behind the space programme.

Lifting the Iron Curtain, we’re thrust into the intense global – and literally universal – politics of this era, packed with cosmonauts eyeing their next goal, engineers facing government pressure and a whole host of socio-political backstabbing in the race to the top.

With the first two episodes now out, rave reviews are already pouring in, with the series debuting with a perfect 100% Rotten Tomatoes score.

Collider praised the series for not mimicking its predecessor but ‘carving out a completely separate path within the overall franchise’.

‘When Star City is at its best, it’s a slow-burning spy show with the subject of optimism under extreme pressure,’ Inverse added.

Filmhounds went as far as to say: ‘The show has reached the Moon, but the ship still needs to stick the landing with the final three episodes.

‘If it does, then Star City would make one small step toward being the best show of the year.’

Meanwhile, The Guardian’s four-star review shared: ‘By relocating to the USSR, the stakes are immediately higher and inescapable. The fear and the tension of living that vaunted Marxist-Leninist life are palpable in every scene. Everyone, after all, is trapped.’

The Hollywood Reporter called it ‘darkly compelling’ and Radio Times highlighted Anna as ‘delivering a truly standout turn as the woman with eyes everywhere.’

Discussing an unexpected source of inspiration for the character, she told Radio Times: ‘It’s good fun, playing a really terrible person. It’s funny – often I would think of Lucy [Punch] a lot when we were doing Motherland, because Lucy had to play high status, whereas the rest of us didn’t.’

As for what inspired creator Ben to take a gamble on a spin-off, he shared: ‘The more we read about the Soviet program, and how secretive it was, and this city in the middle of the woods that no one could access – the more we read and understood and heard about it, the more we thought there’s something special here.

Star City episodes one and two are available to stream on Apple TV Plus now.

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