Star City

Apple

While some of my favorite shows of 2026 so far are about to end, new ones are spooling up. And many of those favorite shows? They’ve aired on Apple TV, the streaming service with the best batting average on the market. And as such, you may be able to guess where this new, 100% Rotten Tomatoes scored series is from.

That’s right, it’s another Apple TV sci-fi hit. That would be Star City, the For All Mankind spinoff that, as it stands, has a perfect 100% critic score, making it the highest-rated live-action sci-fi series of the year so far for new or returning shows in the genre. If we do consider animated series as well here, Invincible also has a 100% score, so it would be tied for first. Here’s how Star City stacks up otherwise:

• Star City – 100% critic score
• Fallout season 2 – 96% critic score
• The Boys season 5 – 93% critic score
• Spider-Noir – 91% critic score
• For All Mankind season 5 – 90%
• Star Trek: Starfleet Academy – 85%

Star City shows off the opposite side of For All Mankind, based on the Russian space program. Here’s the synopsis:

“In this expansion of the "For All Mankind" universe, experience a what-if take on the global space race from the Soviet Union perspective; go behind the Iron Curtain, where it's more dangerous on the ground than in space.”

This takes the timeline back to the earliest days of the show, to the moon race itself,, when the Soviets won, creating an alternate timeline in which space program development accelerated dramatically around the world. In recent seasons, that’s led from everything to Mars colonies to asteroid heists.

Can Star City maintain this placement? There aren’t many reviews in yet, so it could still fall. It is also going up against a number of extremely high-profile sci-fi shows the rest of this year. That includes the likes of Silo season 3, 3 Body Problem season 2, Blade Runner 2099, Lanterns and Neuromancer, among others, making for an exciting latter half of 2026.

It’s not clear if Star City will get a second season, though it might, as For All Mankind will end with season 6, and Apple may want to continue the franchise. I remain kind of stunned that this show has lasted this long. Not that it’s not good, but the budget, the relative lack of public conversation about it, it just seems like Apple gave it a huge amount of runway to do whatever it wanted for however long it wanted. Plus this spinoff! I mean, good for the show, it’s just something we almost never see in streaming. But that’s kind of what sets Apple apart.

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Pick up my sci-fi novels the Herokiller series and The Earthborn Trilogy.