Space Race

A breathtaking view of an incredible period of world history never to be repeated. Cold war politics, ambitious personalities, and ingenious technological developments, all vie for centre stage, the winner for me being the sheer boldness and courage of engineers and astronauts of that amazing era. The tension is maintained throughout and it is a roller-coaster ride of success and failure, triumph and tragedy, joy and despair, the key players represented "warts and all" as real personalities . I found it a completely absorbing TV experience, real footage skillfully intertwined with reenactment. The views of the rocket launches - real or CGI - left me awestruck; I am sorry there were only 4 episodes, but it means not a moment is wasted.

Shocking!

In 1965 I saw Jury Gagarin alive. He was sincere, unpretentious and kindly, he was at ease and looked like well-educated and intellectual person. In this movie I saw a clown! The actor looks like dummy with affected gestures and mimicry. They made a cartoon! The real Gagarin was someone else! Don't believe in this movie!

I saw this movie after the movies like "Taming of Fire" and "Apollo 13" and after reading books "Rockets and People" by Chertok and "Korolev: Myths and Facts" by Golovanov. I was shocked by tiresome scenario, poor acting and producing, and a lots of inexactitudes of "Space Race".

The movie is the tedious rendering of well-known in Russia historical facts. A lots of interesting known facts of the space projects was not demonstrated. Some facts and details were perverted. For example, in 1945 Korolev was already not a prisoner (liberated in 1944), and in 1940 he was already not in Kolyma prison gold mine, but in special prison design bureau. Korolev was the designer in prison design bureau and he was not buried the dead prisoners. But in the movie Korolev worked as grave digger after 1940 (because jailer have shoulder straps on uniform). IMHO, the authors of movie have no profound knowledge about this part of the history and they can't to make interesting movies.

The BBC have shown that the as-yet-to-mature genre of 'docudrama' can compete with the best their is to offer from either of its parent genres. The script was tight - and by that I mean sounding like what real people might actually have said - and the acting of a good standard. I do not confess to know the intricate details of the actual American-Soviet space race, but suspect the scriptwriters distilled the story to just the right level, allowing for an understanding of the larger issues without losing a sense of the real people behind the events. My only complaint: perhaps a little more of the budget could have been directed toward the CGI sequences.....? Informative and watchable, I look forward to the BBC's next foray into the world of docudrama.

I've just visited Russian forum of our TV-channel that had showed this film. Well... 99 per cent of active Russian audience is disappointed. We wanted to see more true facts of our space achievements in this film. But authors had in mind something else... :( We are big and beautiful country with intelligent people living here. We are proud of all our space dreams, real achievements on the one hand in this field and in science on the other hand. So I'd like to ask authors: Where is our LUNOHOD? And where, the Hell our MIR station? Ah? I'm quite sure, that LUNOHOD events took place much earlier Armstrong's "walk on Moon". And to comment numerous technical and science mistakes - I really have no time and enough space here! Se our constructive critics in Russian forum on www.1tv.ru

I watched the series on the European Arte channel and was really impressed. I am not a fan of the docu-series mixed with actors, but in this case the method played well by filling in the wholes in documentary coverage, and by telling much more and in a more expressive manner about the principal characters in the space race and their feelings and motivations.

Certainly, there are many details that were left out, and many of the Russian viewers on the different Web fora pointed out that the presentation lacks balance and accuracy. Yet, the documentary information was extremely valuable, as all the Soviet space program was so much covered by secrecy and deformed by propaganda that I realized that despite the fact that I was living in a Communist country by that time I knew almost nothing about it.

This is a film to watch, and hopefully more will be done on the same subject and throw more light on these exciting aspects of mankind recent history.