Long before For All Mankind settled Mars, the series began as a period piece—yes, one set in an alternate timeline where the Soviet Union landed the first man on the moon, but a period piece nonetheless. In those first couple seasons, before events diverged too wildly from reality and the Space Race escalated to interplanetary colonization, the show remained rooted in a recognizable version of America in the ’70s and ’80s, albeit an increasingly progressive one. Its gentle humanism recalled Halt And Catch Fire, one of the greatest dramas ever about what technology can and can’t provide us.
Star City, the new For All Mankind spinoff and prequel, aims to return to basics. Backtracking to the late ’60s and early ’70s, showrunners Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert (the main creative voices behind both series) relocate the drama to the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center. Some of the same events from those early episodes of the parent series play out again from the Soviet perspective, most notably the landing of the first woman on the moon, Anastasia Belikova (Alice Englert).
For All Mankind isn’t actually required viewing for those interested in checking the prequel, which leans harder into paranoid-thriller elements with its peek behind the Iron Curtain. Fans will recognize a couple major characters receiving their own origin stories, including young engineer Sergei Nikulov (Josef Davies, the spitting image of Piotr Adamczyk). Particularly central to the story is Irina Morozova (Agnes O’Casey), a junior surveillance agent destined for bigger things at the KGB. For now, she’s a shy newbie who spends most of the day listening in on the private conversations of cosmonauts and their families.
Key to the original series’ effectiveness was the interior life it afforded most of its cast members. And there’s certainly something intriguing about Irina’s voyeuristic fascination with the people she monitors, including respected cosmonaut Valya Markelov (Adam Nagaitis), his neglected wife Tanya (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis), and their close friend Sasha Polivanov (Solly McLeod). The premiere quickly establishes a juicy love rectangle among the three of them and Anastasia, the latter of whom is forced by the government into an arranged marriage with Sasha to be molded into an exemplar for Soviet womanhood.
But there’s something missing in the overall approach to characterization, even if this ensemble works well together in theory. It’s not just the unavoidable Chernobyl treatment of casting mostly British actors in Russian roles, even when those same characters spoke Russian on the original show; that’s to be expected in a production like this one. The bigger issue is the skin-deep depiction of these cosmonauts, spies, and their loved ones. After watching the five episodes provided to critics, it’s difficult to say much about most of these characters outside their function in the story. It’s even harder to invest emotionally in what happens to them.
That applies to the enigmatic Chief Designer (Rhys Ifans), implied since For All Mankind’s early days to represent the real-life Soviet engineer Sergei Korolev. Korolev died during surgery in 1966, but in this universe, he survived and pushed the space program to new heights, creating that initial point of divergence by landing a man on the moon. Star City plays more coy about whether this Chief Designer is a literal depiction of Korolev—and as with other characters, it fails to give him much dimension outside his single-minded pursuit of further space exploration.
Depth can be discovered with time, which is very possible here. In the meantime, it’s enjoyable enough to settle into this world; the spy drama is nowhere near as dense or psychologically complex as The Americans, to use an obvious comparison point, but KGB surveillance head Lyudmilla Raskova (Anna Maxwell Martin) makes for an appealingly ruthless villain. Many of the episodes (almost all of which run a full hour) drag, but by the midpoint of the season, different corners of the story are interacting more directly—For All Mankind has always loved watching a plan come together, and it’s similarly somewhat exciting to see the Chief Designer gradually build out his crew for a secret mission to Venus, one of the other core narrative threads of the season.
Still, one gets the feeling that a secret underground operation like this one should be a little more fun. I’d expect most Soviet-set dramas to come with a heavy dose of dourness, but there’s an overall humorlessness that prevents some of the characters from distinguishing themselves. Take Sasha, one of the more likable characters. He’s painted as an underdog and described in dialogue as reckless or impulsive, but McLeod’s amiable performance isn’t quite enough to replicate the charm and complexity of Gordo Stevens, For All Mankind’s original lovable fuck-up. (For one, the jokes just aren’t there yet.) Sasha does shine when paired up with Anastasia, another withdrawn and emotionally repressed character in a cast full of them; it’s rewarding to watch their cold, transactional relationship gradually thaw and transform into something real. There’s a welcome breeziness in their scenes together that is absent otherwise.
There’s a lot of potential to this setting and story, especially as a refreshing counterbalance to a show that arguably lost its purpose somewhere along the way. But for a show chock full of obfuscation and betrayal—both to the state and to the sanctity of marriage—Star City sometimes plays it too straight.
Star City premieres on Apple TV Friday, May 29.
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