This Mind-Blowing Alternate History Is Must-See TV

Photo Illustration by Victoria Sunday/The Daily Beast/Getty Images/Apple TVSocialism is so dire and destructive that even when For All Mankind’s creators reimagine the Soviet Union as triumphant in the 20th-century space race, they can’t stop portraying the country as a hellhole of paranoia, deceit, betrayal, cruelty, and misery.That depiction is the backbone of Star City (May 29), a spin-off of Ben Nedivi, Matt Wolpert, and Ronald D. Moore’s Apple TV sci-fi series that views its events from the USSR’s perspective—a vantage point that underscores that even in victory, there’s no progress in a socialist system, only more of the same tyrannical repression and suffering. It’s a shockingly grim complement to the streamer’s inherently hopeful hit, although that doesn’t mean it’s lesser. Rather, with a bleakness that’s as compelling as its predecessor’s optimism, it wrings taut drama (all in English, despite its setting) from the story of Eastern Bloc men and women trying, at great personal and moral risk, to foster innovation under the thumb of authoritarianism.Read more at The Daily Beast.