Produced by Deborah Cadbury — the author of Space Race (reviewed in Cosmos Issue 10) — this four-part drama from the BBC adds tension and colour to her story of humanity's early steps towards the stars. It covers the 25 years between the Nazis' last-ditch bid to subdue Britain with its V2 rockets and Neil Armstrong's "giant leap for mankind" onto the surface of the Moon from Apollo 11 in July 1969.

This ensemble dramatisation is led by Steven Nicolson, who plays the charismatic Sergei Korolev, and Richard Dillane, who takes the part of Wernher von Braun. Other familiar faces include Tim Woodward as General Nedelin, one of Korolev's unremittingly grim NKVD/KGB overseers, while narration is provided by Robert Lindsay, who has in recent times turned his hand to the part of Richard III for the Royal Shakespeare Company.

The quality of the cast is matched by the writing and direction of Christopher Spencer. From the opening scene of a Luftwaffe unit launching the first of von Braun's V2s on its lethal journey to London from a Belgian forest, this is well-paced stuff.

The story cuts between both camps: Korolev's team, battling an initial shortage of resources and an intransigent state, nonetheless take inspiration from Korolev to notch up an astonishing series of successes — putting Sputnik into orbit; the space flights of the dog Laika, the first living creature in space (from Earth, anyway) and then Yuri Gargarin. Meanwhile, von Braun is hampered by U.S. reluctance to view their rocket program as anything more than a means to deliver nuclear weapons, and by a distrust of von Braun's German-dominated team.

There is no denying the excitement of the story, nor the accomplishment the BBC brings to its telling. Indeed, it could almost be fiction but for the jarring note of Korolev's death, in 1966, and the failure of the Soviet space program as a result.

This is history writ large, and the only vague disappointment is that it is not larger still. There are no extras on the DVD and, in common with the book, science takes a back seat to history and biography. There is courage in abundance here, and inspiration too. But look elsewhere for a critical view of the fundamentals of rocket science.