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Apple TV's Soviet Space Race Spinoff Star City Delivers Cold War Paranoia

Engadget •
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Apple TV dropped the full trailer for Star City, a spinoff of For All Mankind that flips the script by telling the alt-history space race from the Soviet perspective. The trailer drips with Cold War paranoia — secret photographs, tapped phones, and characters who mysteriously disappear, all set against the race to the Moon. It stars Rhys Ifans, Anna Maxwell Martin, Agnes O'Casey, and Alice Englert.

Unlike its parent series, Star City abandons the time-jump structure that defined For All Mankind. The showrunners describe it as "living in the 1970s" and "its own genre," a deliberate departure from the original's decades-spanning narrative. For All Mankind began with Russia beating the US to the Moon in the 1960s; this spinoff explores how that butterfly effect played out for the Soviet space program.

Star City premieres May 29 with two episodes, the same day season five of For All Mankind concludes. The original show was recently renewed for a sixth and final season. Apple TV has quietly become the go-to streamer for sci-fi enthusiasts, pairing this premiere with season two of the multiverse thriller Dark Matter and season three of dystopian adventure Silo, alongside originals like Severance and Foundation.