Star City

An intense, immaculate paranoid thriller. .... Impeccably acted (despite the wonky accents) and rife with intrigue, “Star City” is dark, compelling and completely impressive. It works beautifully as a standalone without any prior knowledge of “For All Mankind.”

Star City is worlds away from For All Mankind - and is all the better for it.

Star City soon establishes itself as an ideal kind of spin-off, replicating the strengths of its predecessor while thriving as a standalone drama.

Star City's distinct visuals, sharp performances, and compelling narrative that pulls back the curtain on the mysteries surrounding the Soviet position in the space race all combine for a spin-off that doesn't necessarily need to match For All Mankind's longevity to be gripping in the moment.

Wrings taut drama from the story of Eastern Bloc men and women trying, at great personal and moral risk, to foster innovation under the thumb of authoritarianism.

Star City is cold and claustrophobic where For All Mankind is caring and cheerful, which makes for a gripping inversion of Apple's sci-fi drama — inspiring awe of a very different kind.

Everybody around the space program knows what they’re not allowed to say, and yet a lot of them feel tempted to say it. Which is a tension we can believe in as the series continues to unfold its detailed alternate reality.

If this is the more slow-burn sibling to For All Mankind, it’s one that gradually draws you in for something perhaps even more satisfying altogether. English accents and all.

Star City has none of the glossy blandness that For All Mankind did at the beginning, before it found its feet, and none of the soapiness that has occasionally beset it since. By relocating to the USSR, the stakes are immediately higher and inescapable.

Star City posits a much darker vision, and arguably one much more in keeping with our own current national mood. It makes for a bleak time — but some very compelling drama.

The good news is that I felt substantially more engaged by Star City than I have by the parent show the last couple of seasons, and there are clear ways the spinoff differentiates itself from its predecessor besides the setting. The bad news is that Star City has some flaws, some systemic to this creative team (like FAM, it was developed by Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert, and Ben Nedivi), some specific to this idea and how it's executed.

Though these first two episodes feel more like exercises that set up the trajectory of Season 1, there are spurts of greatness that show off Star City’s potential in having its own clear vision (and version) of this alt-history timeline.

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.

But where “Mankind” is airy and optimistic despite mankind’s many struggles (how American of it), “Star City” keeps its focus bleak, dour, and oppressive, and subsequently has some trouble achieving liftoff.