In the spirit of For All Mankind, an alternate history of the Soviet space programme in the wake of winning the race to the moon in 1969.

What I loved about the first series of For All Mankind (from the same creative stable as Star City) was how true it felt to the spirit of the Apollo generation. More recently that show appeared to be degenerating into a dreary Martian space soap – looking horribly studio bound to boot – and I gave up after a couple of episodes of season 5.

Luckily for me, Ronald D. Moore and chums have rediscovered their mojo, creating a world rooted in a similarly plausible alternate history on the other side of the Iron Curtain, full of echoes of the cosmonaut folklore that so intrigued me as a teenager and then in later life as more of that history was revealed following Glasnost.

Whether or not it strictly qualifies as science fiction is another matter. What Ron and the boys have served up for us is essentially an extended riff on the 2006 German cold war drama, The Lives of Others, centred around stone-faced KGB Colonel Lyudmila Raskova (Anna Maxwell Martin channeling her best Rosa Klebb) hunting out American infiltrators and recruiting KGB ingenue Irina Morozova (Agnes O’Casey) who is getting unhealthily involved with her surveillance subjects. Meanwhile, Rhys Ifans as Chief Designer Sergei Korolev (I’m guessing he’s from Georgia as he has a South Walian accent) has ideas to somehow mount a mission to land on Venus in a deep sea diving bell without anyone noticing. While this sounds like something out of Jules Verne, or H.G. Wells, students of the soviet space programme will know that their prototype lunar module was very much in that ball park.

It’s all photographed in washed out greys and blues, the poor actors condemned to sport gloriously terrible clothes – with Bridget Jones underwear for the women and comb-overs for the men to top off the period authenticity.

Oh yes, and every now and again, they go into space (miserably, because they’re Communists) although at the half way point there does seem to be a promise of a bit more extra-terrestrial (and miserable) derring-do. Having said that, their occasionally stereotypical Soviet misery is absorbing, entertaining and by no means implausible – even if it is a bit one-note at times.

Verdict: Star City feels as if it’s aspiring to have the verité weight of Craig Mazin’s Chernobyl, and while that might be beyond its reach, there’s no question that it takes me to my 60s/70s space kid happy place. I’m hooked into the stories and genuinely excited to see how the second half of the season pans out. For All Mankind is dead – long live Star City! 7/10

Martin Jameson

www.ninjamarmoset.com