{"id":2620708,"date":"2026-06-29T06:08:02","date_gmt":"2026-06-29T10:08:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/reviewed-apple-tvs-star-city\/"},"modified":"2026-06-29T06:12:29","modified_gmt":"2026-06-29T10:12:29","slug":"reviewed-apple-tvs-star-city","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/reviewed-apple-tvs-star-city\/","title":{"rendered":"Reviewed: Apple TV&#8217;s Star City"},"content":{"rendered":"<aside class=\"mashsb-container mashsb-main mashsb-stretched\"><div class=\"mashsb-box\"><div class=\"mashsb-count mash-medium\" style=\"&quot;\"><div class=\"counts mashsbcount\">10<\/div><span class=\"mashsb-sharetext\">SHARES<\/span><\/div><div class=\"mashsb-buttons\"><a class=\"mashicon-facebook mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/www.facebook.com\/sharer.php?u=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.conservativenewsdaily.net%2Fbreaking-news%2Freviewed-apple-tvs-star-city%2F\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Facebook<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-twitter mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/intent\/tweet?text=&amp;url=https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/?p=2620708&amp;via=ConservNewsDly\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Twitter<\/span><\/a><a class=\"mashicon-subscribe mash-medium mash-nomargin mashsb-noshadow\" href=\"#\" target=\"_top\" rel=\"nofollow\"><span class=\"icon\"><\/span><span class=\"text\">Subscribe<\/span><\/a><div class=\"onoffswitch2 mash-medium mashsb-noshadow\" style=\"display:none\"><\/div><\/div>\n            <\/div>\n                <div style=\"clear:both\"><\/div><\/aside>\n            <!-- Share buttons by mashshare.net - Version: 4.0.47--><p>&#8220;Star City,&#8221; a spinoff of the series &#8220;For All Mankind,&#8221; explores an <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/knowles-the-left-fears-cats-quizzer-more-than-mein-kampf\/\" title=\"KNOWLES: The Left Fears \u201cCat\u2019s Quizzer\u201d More Than \u201cMein Kampf\u201d\">alternate history<\/a> of the 1969 space race from the Soviet perspective. Set during the Cold War era under Leonid Brezhnev&#8217;s leadership, the series follows Soviet cosmonauts and their domestic challenges amidst the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/biden-state-dept-celebrates-intersex-awareness-day-as-middle-east-burns\/\" title=\"Biden State Dept marks &#039;Intersex Awareness Day&#039; amidst Middle East turmoil.\">tense geopolitical climate<\/a>. The plot centers around Anastasia belikova, the first woman on the moon, and her elaborate personal and professional life, including her marriage to Sasha Polivanov and her interactions with other cosmonauts like Tanya Mironova and Valya Mironov. The <a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/3YuVZYV\" >series balances grand space adventures<\/a> with intimate domestic struggles, delving into issues like state-controlled marriages, surveillance, and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/corporate-press-omits-radical-religious-motivation-behind-fatal-stabbing-of-oshae-sibley\/\" title=\"Mainstream media ignores religious extremism in O&#039;Shae Sibley&#039;s fatal stabbing.\">moral dilemmas<\/a> within the Soviet system. Enhanced by strong performances and detailed storytelling, &#8220;Star City&#8221; employs visual and auditory elements effectively to portray the Soviet world, including the use of Russian-influenced accents by British actors, which some viewers find distractingly incongruous. The show also contains Easter eggs for fans of &#8220;For all Mankind,&#8221; enriching its narrative with connections to the broader alternate-history universe. it combines space race drama with personal and political complexities,offering a compelling portrayal of Soviet life during this pivotal era.  <\/p>\n<p class=\"readmore\">\n    <button onclick=\"showReadMore()\" id=\"readmorebtn\">Read more&#8230;<\/button>\n<\/p>\n<hr id=\"line\">\n<span id=\"more\"><\/p>\n<article class=\"fn-body\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Early in <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/apple-2\/\">Apple TV\u2019s<\/a> <em>Star City<\/em>, an error forces a Soviet cosmonaut\u2019s reentry pod to land in Siberia. Stepping out of the capsule, our heroine is briefly menaced by a bear. Has the Marxist-Leninist state arranged for the creature\u2019s appearance, subduing an erratic \u201cworker\u201d by means of its symbolic beast? Unlikely. Yet it says something about the new drama\u2019s<a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/cold-war\/\"> Cold War<\/a> premise that we briefly consider the possibility. <\/p>\n<section class=\"explore-more-section\" id=\"wex-recommended-widget\">\n<div class=\"magazine-container single\">\n<h1 class=\"magazine-title mt-2\">Recommended Stories<\/h1>\n<p>             <i class=\"fa-solid fa-play icon\"><\/i>         <\/div>\n<div class=\"explore-grid\">\n<div class=\"explore-card\">                         <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/entertainment\/4628101\/naomi-lim-save-act-wont-help-republicans-win-in-november\/?itm_source=parsely-api\">                             <\/p>\n<div class=\"explore-thumb-wrap\">                                                                                                                                  <\/div>\n<h3>Naomi Lim: SAVE Act \u2018won\u2019t help Republicans win in November\u2019<\/h3>\n<p>                         <\/a>                     <\/div>\n<div class=\"explore-card\">                         <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/entertainment\/4625038\/what-to-know-july-4th-celebration-dc\/?itm_source=parsely-api\">                             <\/p>\n<div class=\"explore-thumb-wrap\">                                                                                                                                  <\/div>\n<h3>What to know about the July Fourth celebrations in DC<\/h3>\n<p>                         <\/a>                     <\/div>\n<div class=\"explore-card\">                         <a href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/news\/white-house\/4627743\/bill-maher-presses-vance-trump-election-fraud-claims\/?itm_source=parsely-api\">                             <\/p>\n<div class=\"explore-thumb-wrap\">                                                                                                                                  <\/div>\n<h3>Bill Maher presses Vance over Trump\u2019s election fraud claims: \u2018That s*** has to stop\u2019<\/h3>\n<p>                         <\/a>                     <\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/section>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Star City<\/em> is a spinoff of <em>For All Mankind<\/em>, the streaming service\u2019s five-season take on an alternate-history space race. As that series opened, Americans watched in dismay as the <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/russia\/\">Russians<\/a> beat us to the moon, adorning the lunar surface with the hammer and sickle. <em>Star City<\/em> tells the same story from the <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/soviet-union\/\">Soviet<\/a> perspective, a choice that takes us back to the heady days of 1969. Leonid Brezhnev is in power, the bipolar world grinds on, and the New Soviet man has just made an impressive stride. <\/p>\n<div class=\"wex-inarticle-ad wex-inarticle-ad-art-dsk-inart-1\">\n<div class=\"wex-ad-wrap wex-ad-art-dsk-inart-1\" style=\"min-height:90px\"><span class=\"wex-ad-label\" hidden>Advertisement<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-3182201-15\" data-wex-ad=\"art-dsk-inart-1\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The show is impeccably acted and cast. Alice Englert plays Anastasia Belikova, the first woman on the moon and the recipient of the aforementioned \u201cgrizzly\u201d treatment. Her husband, Sasha Polivanov (Solly McLeod), is a hotshot pilot whose own <a href=\"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/investment-into-private-space-companies-reaches-new-heights\/\" title=\"Investment Into Private Space Companies Reaches New Heights\">space ventures<\/a> have not been without their flaws. Among Sasha\u2019s earthly peccadillos is an affair with Tanya Mironova (Ruby Ashbourne Serkis), wife of a fellow cosmonaut and a onetime target of American spies. Completing this menage is Tanya\u2019s husband, Valya Mironov (Adam Nagaitis), a veteran space man who, in the new series\u2019s first episode, accompanies Anastasia to the moon. <\/p>\n<div class=\"article-paywall\">\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Showrunners Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert\u2019s first job is to keep these characters straight for viewers, and they do so admirably. At times as domestic as a Tolstoy novel, <em>Star City<\/em> leaves the stratosphere only after grounding its heroes in household concerns. Chief among these for Anastasia and Sasha is the navigation of a union that has been arranged by the state. \u201cYou cannot be the exemplar of Soviet womanhood as a single woman,\u201d a commissar tells the bride-to-be. For Tanya and Valya, the problems of married life are at once more ordinary and harder to solve. Valya is working too much, leaving Tanya without the attention she craves. And who, during a rare visit to Moscow, is the woman with whom Valya nervously locks eyes across a bar? <\/p>\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"alignright size-large is-resized\">Rhys Ifans in \u2018Star City.\u2019 (Courtesy of Apple TV+)<\/p>\n<p>&#8221; data-large-file=&#8221;https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-content\/uploads\/\/2026\/06\/localimages\/LA.TV_.070126.jpg?w=696&#8243; height=&#8221;658&#8243; width=&#8221;1024&#8243; &#8220;https:><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Rhys Ifans in \u2018Star City.\u2019 (Courtesy of Apple TV+)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Star City<\/em>\u2019s other narrative engines are the perils of space travel and the injustices of life behind the Iron Curtain. Each boosts the production in its own particular way. Like other space-flight dramas, Apple\u2019s latest must transcend the necessary technicalities embedded in its dialogue to help audiences along. \u201cDepressurize the hab\u201d means little to the untutored viewer. The show\u2019s music and sound editing, both unobtrusively excellent, do much to teach us the stakes of any given moment. So does the performance of <em>House of the Dragon\u2019s<\/em> Rhys Ifans as Sergei Korolev, the Soviet program\u2019s kindly, driven chief designer. Yet Nedivi and Wolpert\u2019s ultimate fallback is their understanding that TV exists to be seen. One shot of a cosmonaut blown from an airlock is worth a thousand pages of mechanical exposition. <\/p>\n<div class=\"wex-inarticle-ad wex-inarticle-ad-art-dsk-inart-2\">\n<div class=\"wex-ad-wrap wex-ad-art-dsk-inart-2\" style=\"min-height:90px\"><span class=\"wex-ad-label\" hidden>Advertisement<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-3182201-16\" data-wex-ad=\"art-dsk-inart-2\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">The same is true of the inclusion of certain telling details, one or two of which will do to establish an entire Soviet world. Under constant surveillance because of her husband\u2019s job, Tanya procures a samizdat record (the Guess Who\u2019s \u201cUndun\u201d) camouflaged as X-ray film, but the bootleg begins to degrade after a single spin. And Anastasia\u2019s return from the moon sees her introduced to a lookalike who will literally replace her if she misbehaves. Standing in for the apparatus behind these indignities is Lyudmilla Raskova (Anna Maxwell Martin), a KGB officer so drearily competent that one expects to catch her memorizing the latest five-year plan. More interesting by far is the older woman\u2019s uncertain protege, Irina Morozova. Played by a brilliant Agnes O\u2019Casey, Irina brings to mind the Stasi protagonist of the East Berlin-set feature film <em>The Lives of Others<\/em> (2006). For both characters, a job as a state eavesdropper produces compelling moral qualms. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Although the new show is easily good enough to stand on its own, for those who know and love <em>For All Mankind<\/em>, Easter eggs await. Because the original series has progressed as far as the 2010s, audiences already know Irina\u2019s fate as a hapless apparatchik and Siberian deportee. Fan-favorite Sergei Nikulov, <em>For All Mankind\u2019s<\/em> beloved defector extraordinaire, appears here as an eager young member of Soviet ground control. The familiarity of some audiences with these characters\u2019 futures in no way detracts from <em>Star City\u2019s<\/em> narrative power. In some ways, it heightens it. To adapt Dr. Johnson, when a man knows a <a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/tag\/tv\/\">TV<\/a> character is to be hanged in a fortnight, it concentrates his mind wonderfully. <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><strong><a target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\" href=\"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/premium\/4609876\/wolfgang-mozart-tv-show-amadeus\/\">THE WISH TO BE LIKE WOLFGANG: REVIEW OF \u2018AMADEUS\u2019 <\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n<div class=\"wex-inarticle-ad wex-inarticle-ad-art-dsk-inart-3\">\n<div class=\"wex-ad-wrap wex-ad-art-dsk-inart-3\" style=\"min-height:90px\"><span class=\"wex-ad-label\" hidden>Advertisement<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-3182201-17\" data-wex-ad=\"art-dsk-inart-3\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">Were I to lodge one complaint about the series, it would be that the actors sound distractingly wrong, despite their quality. In <em>The Americans<\/em>, FX\u2019s Cold War masterpiece, Russian characters were played by Russians speaking their own (subtitled) language. <em>For All Mankind\u2019s<\/em> Soviets are Russian actors using Russian-accented English. <em>Star City<\/em>, meanwhile, casts Brits as Russians and lets them speak as if they have just crawled out of a Yorkshire mine. That we occasionally see Cyrillic script onscreen only adds to our disorientation. Where on Earth is this \u201cRussia\u201d supposed to be? <\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\">I suppose Nedivi and Wolpert thought viewers would eventually get used to the aural confusion. I never quite did. \u201cOi, comrade! That berk just nicked my <em>Das Kapital<\/em>!\u201d Innit?<\/p>\n<p class=\"wp-block-paragraph\"><em>Graham Hillard is the TV critic for the <\/em>Washington Examiner<em> magazine.<\/em><\/p>\n<div class=\"wex-inarticle-ad wex-inarticle-ad-art-dsk-inart-4\">\n<div class=\"wex-ad-wrap wex-ad-art-dsk-inart-4\" style=\"min-height:90px\"><span class=\"wex-ad-label\" hidden>Advertisement<\/span><\/p>\n<div id=\"div-gpt-ad-3182201-25\" data-wex-ad=\"art-dsk-inart-4\"><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/article>\n<p><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In Apple TV\u2019s Star City, a Soviet cosmonaut\u2019s pod crash-lands in Siberia, where she is briefly threatened by a bear. While unlikely that the state orchestrated this, it hints at the Cold War themes of the series<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":956,"featured_media":2620709,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/LA.TV_.070126.jpg?w=696","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[33651],"tags":[63997,81871,42947],"class_list":["post-2620708","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-western-journal","tag-apple-tv-2","tag-star-city","tag-tv-review"],"fifu_image_url":"https:\/\/www.washingtonexaminer.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/06\/LA.TV_.070126.jpg?w=696","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2620708","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/956"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2620708"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2620708\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2620712,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2620708\/revisions\/2620712"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2620709"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2620708"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2620708"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.conservativenewsdaily.net\/breaking-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2620708"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}