The best show on Apple TV+ is coming back – and it’s bringing a spin-off series

For All Mankind is by far my favourite sci-fi show: over its four seasons so far it's delivered cold war spy drama, audacious space heists and gunfights on the Moon. So I'm beyond excited at the news that not only has a fifth season been greenlit, but that there's also a new companion series, Star City, following the Soviet space race.

If you're not already hooked on For All Mankind it's a drama set in an alternative history where Russia, not the US, won the space race. It begins with test pilots in the mid-20th Century and by the end of season 4 is showing us entire colonies living on Mars. And while it's a sci-fi show with some spectacular visuals, at heart it's a beautifully written drama about ordinary people doing extraordinary things that's often just on the right side of utter ridiculousness. 

For All Mankind Season 5 and Star City: what we know so far

Star City has been created by the same team behind For All Mankind, and it takes its name from the Russian space agency's HQ we saw in the most recent season. According to executive producers Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi, "The more we learned about this secret city in the forests outside Moscow where the Soviet cosmonauts and engineers worked and lived, the more we wanted to tell this story of the other side of the space race."

According to Apple, the new show is going to come with plenty of cold war paranoia. It's 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".

There's no sign of a streaming date for the show as yet – they have to make it first – and the same applies to Star City. But I'm very excited about this, because For All Mankind has managed the difficult trick of maintaining its momentum and the quality of its writing for four seasons now, and it shows no signs of running out of rocket fuel. Don't just take my word for how good it is: Season 4 of the show has 100% on Rotten Tomatoes. 

All four seasons of For All Mankind are streaming on Apple TV Plus.