For All Mankind creators drop first 'pulse-pounding' trailer for Star City — and I think the new Apple TV sci-fi space race drama could be even darker
Anything for Anna Maxwell Martin
by https://www.techradar.com/uk/author/jasmine-valentine · TechRadarNews By Jasmine Valentine published 23 April 2026
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- Star City, a new sci-fi series from the creators of Apple TV's For All Mankind, has dropped its first trailer
- Starring Rhys Ifans, Anna Maxwell Martin, Agnes O’Casey and Alice Englert
- Explores the space race from "behind the iron curtain, when the Soviet Union became the first nation to put a man on the moon"
The first trailer for Star City — a new Apple TV sci-fi series from the creators of For All Mankind — has arrived, giving us our first look at the "alt-history" of the space race. According to the streamer, the series will "explore the space race from behind the iron curtain, when the Soviet Union became the first nation to put a man on the moon, from May 29."
The cast is lead by Rhys Ifans, Anna Maxwell Martin, Agnes O’Casey and Alice Englert, and in the first trailer (which you can catch up with below) we see a traitor is in their midst, with an unknown source leaking military secrets out of their Star City base.
Compared to For All Mankind, Apple TV's alternative take on real history is a whole lot darker... and that's a good thing.
Article continues below
Star City on Apple TV turns the space race into a 'paranoid, propulsive thriller'
There's no doubting from the above trailer that Star City is technically fiction, but it's perhaps more linked to real-world events than we realize. For a start, the show's title alludes to the Yuri Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center in Russia, which had the same nickname.
As Apple TV goes onto explain, “Star City is a propulsive paranoid thriller that takes us back to the key moment in the alt-history retelling of the space race — when the Soviet Union became the first nation to put a man on the moon.
"But this time, we explore the story from behind the Iron Curtain, showing the lives of the cosmonauts, the engineers, and the intelligence officers embedded among them in the Soviet space program, and the risks they all took to propel humankind forward."
While For All Mankind isn't exactly a bundle of joy when it comes to imagining the inner workings of space science (especially if you've been watching season 5), the cold color grading and eerie visuals in the above Star City trailer indicate something much more sinister is afoot.
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