Apple TV+’s alt-history Soivet space race show will be led by Anna Maxwell Martin and Rhys Ifans. 

Motherland and Ludwig star Anna Maxwell Martin is to appear in the upcoming For All Mankind spinoff, according to Deadline.

She’ll lead the shown alongside Rhys Ifans (House of the Dragon), which looks at the Soviet side of space race. The whole For All Mankind series is an alternative history which spins on the idea of the Russians beating the US to the moon.

Announced in April 2024, as the main show scored its season 5 commission, Star City comes from the team of Ben Nedivi, Matt Wolpert and Ronald D. Moore, with Nedivi and Wolpert serving as showrunners.

Here’s what we know about Star City:

A robust expansion of the “For All Mankind” universe, “Star City” is a propulsive, paranoid thriller that takes us back to the key moment in the alt-history retelling of the space race — when the Soviet Union became the first nation to put a man on the moon. But this time, we explore the story from behind the Iron Curtain, showing the lives of the cosmonauts, the engineers and the intelligence officers embedded among them in the Soviet space program, and the risks they all took to propel humanity forward

Anna Maxwell Martin will play Lyudmilla, the head of the KGB surveillance department at Star City. We imagine she’ll deploy some of the fantastically withering looks which belonged to Line of Duty‘s humourless DCS Patricia Carmichael. Meanwhile, Rhys Ifans takes on the role of Star City’s Chief Designer.

As with For All Mankind, Star City is produced for Apple TV+ by Sony Pictures Television.

We’ll keep you posted.