Our Star City review makes it clear the show needs a second season

We already predicted a renewal for the show, now we explain why.

Star City review — alt history show is really a Cold War thriller

First some semantics. The show is an alternate version of 1960s history, not science fiction. The same is true of at least the first few seasons of For All Mankind, the show to which this runs parallel. We also suggest this is largely a Cold War thriller as well — to a large extent it’s a portable story of state police, fear, espionage and propaganda. The space exploration is only part of what goes on, serving is it does to provide an historically powerful backdrop.

Several threads run through, with varying degrees of interconnection — the Chief Designer, Sergie Korolov (Rhys Ifans), Anastasia Belikova (Alive Englert) the first woman on the moon and Head of KGB surveillance at Star City Lyudmilla Raskova (Anna Maxwell Martin). Englert is pictured above. Both she and Ifans are recast from the actors used in For All Mankind.

The cast is predominantly British (Englert is Australian), which does seem briefly incongruous against the harsh soviet setting, then quickly becomes the obvious choice vs questionably accurate Russian ancients. The show is filmed in and around Vilnius in Lithuania. Pictures used are from the official press page where you can see others.

The foreground thread is the “what if Russian got the moon first”. Here we get Anastasia Belikova thrust into a moon mission at short notice, becoming a symbol of Soviet womanhood and entering an arranged marriage with another cosmonaut for the publicity. Her story is one of struggle for personal identity mixed with desire to return to space.

Chief Designer Korolov is loyal to the state but also a man of science with vision. He eschews the challenge of building the first moonbase for much bigger ideas — a mission to Venus. This puts him at odds with authority and eventually leads to his downfall. He is noble, committed and perhaps a little blinkered.

When it comes to blinkered, there’s none more so than Lyudmilla Raskova. Her world seems simple: you’re either a traitor to be tortured then shot or somebody who might yet be a traitor. In a world where you are defined by your last failure, she fights to keep one step ahead of rivals and superiors, prepared to do anything to stop enemies of the state. No cost is too high. Raskova has no apparent empathy, just drive to do her job well, yet we sense several times she is in as much fear for her life and career as she instills in others. She may start in the background of the space exploration story, but we soon learn she has interest in and power over everything going on.

As to enemies of the state, American spies are out to learn what they can. Their activities cut across many of the storylines. Luckily for Raskova, she has a whole department of people listening to recordings of every conversation, infidelity or subversive comment. Among these is emerging protege Irina Morozova, another For All Mankind character now recast by Agnes o’Casey (Black Doves). With skill and luck, she becomes an essential aide to Raskova, and we slowly get a sense of what drives her as she becomes increasingly central to the story.

With these four, there’s plenty to admire in terms of performance (and this sadly sidelines many others in the show). We get to the finale caring about Cosmonaut Belikova, feeling sorry for Chief Designer Korolov, being aghast at the bleak horror of (surely award winning?) Raskova and intrigued to know how Morozova will develop. In fact we end up curious about all four (and others), desperate to hear of a renewal to continue the story. It’s unfair, but we do have to single out Maxwell Martin’s phenomenal performance. It may be we are used to seeing her in other types of role, here she is astonishing.

It’s not quite perfect. The final episode brings all the threads together as we wait to find out which snap. There’s a sense two episodes worth of moments are crammed into a single session and the Cold War espionage feel is displace by an action sequence with more than a little contrivance required to bring it about.

Even so, we still recommend the show without hesitation.