The eight-part US series "Star City," which launches on Apple TV on Friday (May 29), uses the real-life Soviet cosmonaut training centre near Moscow as the backdrop for a chilling drama of intrigue, tragedy and KGB brutality.
Star City — known in Russian as Zvyozdny gorodok — lies around 40 kilometres from the Russian capital and remains a place shrouded in mystery to this day.
The makers of the long-running series "For All Mankind" drew inspiration from the real achievements of the Soviet space programme, which put the first human in space.
But writers Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert turn space history on its head in a fictional universe with elements that are at times fantastically grotesque.
Their invented story of a cosmonaut landing on the moon is told — with some parallels to the original series — not from a US perspective but from a Soviet one, with great attention to detail. Scenes for the roughly hour-long episodes were filmed in Lithuania, once part of the Soviet Union.
The setting, with its socialist prefab-block atmosphere, immerses the viewer in the Soviet Union of the 1960s and 1970s. At the time, the real Moscow never put a man on the moon, but it racked up record after record in the Cold War battle of systems, much to Washington's frustration.
"Star City" also shows the dark side of those many victories, which came at the price of absolute — and sometimes deadly — suppression of freedom.
Homage to Soviet space pioneer Korolyov
The science-fiction series, which runs until July, is not least a homage to chief designer Sergei Korolyov — unnamed in the show — warmly portrayed by Rhys Ifans ("House of the Dragon"). Korolyov was the founder of the Soviet rocket and space programme, designed space capsules and prepared Yuri Gagarin for the first human spaceflight.
Ifans gives the man — who was guarded like a state secret and shielded from the public — the face of a researcher who never loses his dignity in the everyday Soviet life of surveillance, coercion and pressure to succeed. He is driven by an inventive spirit and the urge to push into new spheres — as far as Venus and Mars. He is also responsible for creating heroes in the Soviet Union.
No sooner is the first man on the moon being celebrated as a hero in Moscow than the chief designer sends the first female cosmonaut to the lunar surface as the next world sensation.
The fictional character is called Anastasia Belikova (Alice Englert), chosen following a series of terrible events. She bears a striking resemblance to Valentina Tereshkova — who also came from a farming family — the first woman in space, likewise sent into the cosmos by Korolyov.
All of them — the stars of the Soviet space programme, the scientists and designers and their families — share one fate: They live under constant surveillance by the state security services.
The terror in "Star City" has a name, Lyudmila Raskova. The ice-cold KGB officer has apartments bugged and everyone spied upon. And Raskova (Anna Maxwell Martin) stops at nothing in her hunt for a mole leaking secrets to the US competition.
Series evokes dark memories of the surveillance state
It is hard to imagine Russians — accustomed to spotless heroic narratives — telling their own space history as a gripping thriller in this way. Under Russian President Vladimir Putin, himself a former KGB officer, dark portrayals of the authoritarian surveillance state of that era are taboo today. "Star City" evokes such memories unflinchingly, while Russian films often romanticize the Soviet past.
Also part of the reality is that Moscow today is falling behind in the race to the moon. Financial problems and western sanctions are causing the space programme more trouble than spies trying to steal technical advances. Yet the fear of espionage remains palpable to this day — including in Star City.
In Soviet times, the settlement for cosmonauts, space engineers and their families was secured like a high-security prison, as the series also shows. Guided group tours are available today, but security checks are strict, taking 21 days for Russians and 45 days for foreigners.
But once "Star City" has built up a fan base, it could well make many people with no interest in space travel curious enough to pay a visit.