I really, really like For All Mankind. It’s a good sci-fi show. It’s not winning any awards for its depiction of the USSR, but it firmly puts the Russians in the antagonist seat, not necessarily the ‘irredeemable evil’ seat.
FAM getting a spin off entirely focused on the Soviet’s perspective during its alternate history is not something I ever expected to see.
Considering that the latest season of FAM establishes the USSR outliving its real-life point of collapse, while retaining its communist values, I hope that this ‘Star City’ spin off is going to be an even more humanizing look at the Soviets.
For real. Part of its allure for me was how it carefully painted the USSR as the evil guys from the perspective of Americans, but not objectively evil. The second season was in fact heavily hinting that it was the US escalating tensions, while the USSR was simply reacting to escalations.
The beginning of the third season, with the choking scene they just made all of that crumble. And the 4th season showing Soviet cities been stuck in the 70s, was a really bad carricature.
At least they admitted they made mistakes in the writing of season 3 and 4, and will try to fix them going forward.