Early in Apple TV’s Star City, an error forces a Soviet cosmonaut’s 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’s appearance, subduing an erratic “worker” by means of its symbolic beast? Unlikely. Yet it says something about the new drama’s Cold War premise that we briefly consider the possibility. Star City is a spinoff of For All Mankind, the streaming service’s five-season take on an alternate-history space race. As that series opened, Americans watched in dismay as the Russians beat us to the moon, adorning the lunar surface with the hammer and sickle. Star City tells the same story from the Soviet 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. The show is impeccably acted and cast. Alice Englert plays Anastasia Belikova, the first woman on the moon and the recipient of the aforementioned “grizzly” treatment. Her husband, Sasha Polivanov (Solly McLeod), is a hotshot pilot whose own space ventures have not been without their flaws. Among Sasha’s 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’s husband, Valya Mironov (Adam Nagaitis), a veteran space man who, in the new series’s first episode, accompanies Anastasia to the moon.