This review contains minor spoilers tied to one of the alternate history twists.
A charitable read of Apple TV+'s For All Mankindis it's a fairly bland,?? ?? ??? low-stakes show highlighted by entertaining characters and a premise that's at least superficially unique. But I'm now eight hours into the 10-hour opening season and I'm not feeling especially charitable.
Let's get some basics out of the way. If you're here because you're a fan of For All Mankind creator Ronald D. Moore's earlier work, check your expectations. This isn't science fiction. There's science in the NASA stuff and a layer of grounded fantasy in the alternate timeline premise, but there's no secret alien invasion twist here or anything.
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For All Mankindplays it straight instead, imagining a world where the Soviet Union wins in the race to put a man on the moon. This singular event completely reshapes the Cold War-era space race, the premise posits, greatly impacting the U.S. political landscape and accelerating a number of other social and political shifts in the process.
The IRL space race of the '60s and '70s was a back-and-forth escalation, and it's not much different here. The Soviets put a man on the moon, so we follow suit. Then they put a womanon the moon, so NASA, acting under orders from the Oval Office, institutes a new training program that will fast-track a class of woman astronauts. And so it goes from there.
It's a cute idea that works as long as you don't scrutinize it too closely.
It's a bland, low-stakes show highlighted by entertaining characters and a unique premise.
For All Mankindwould have us believe, for example, that the introduction of female astronauts leads directly to the passage of the still-not-ratified Equal Rights Amendment, which would have enshrined equal legal rights for all Americans, regardless of their gender, into the U.S. Constitution. The real-life ERA was almost ratified during the 1970s, but was ultimately undone (in large part) by a conservative movement led by Phyllis Schlafly.
There's much more to the IRL version of this story, too, and that's my point. For All Mankind's entire premise exists inside the relatively small bubble of NASA's space program. It's all unfolding during a formative moment in U.S. history, but we're expected to simply accept that these big, complicated cultural shifts happened because the historic space race roles have been reversed. It's a stretch.
But fine. Let's say you can suspend your disbelief and just get on board with the premise. OK. You've still got a glacially paced story to contend with that's overstuffed with characters and under-served plotlines.
It's probably the Baldwin family that gets the most screen time. Ed (Joel Kinnaman) is a NASA astronaut who flew on Apollo 10 (not really) and could have given America its moon win, but didn't. His wife, Karen (Shantel VanSanten), is... unfortunately defined mostly by her relationship with her family and by a half-hearted and quickly abandoned attempt to paint her as an anti-feminist conservative.
Original image has been replaced. Credit: Mashable Ultimately, For All Mankindstruggles mightily to find a concrete focus in its first season. The story it's trying to tell is too big, and oversaturated with characters whom we're led to believe are important. But it jumps around way too much, never settling down long enough to let its overlapping plots breathe.
The opening episodes introduce the world and the alt-space race. The next few episodes shift over to the female astronauts program and the slate of new characters it introduces. Subsequent arcs follow the continuing twists and turns at NASA as administrations change and the space race turns in different directions.
All of this unfolds in the midst of a timeline that frequently skips ahead by months or even years. That may be important to telling the NASA side of the story, but it doesn't do the enormous cast any favors. Keeping track of all the different interpersonal relationships is challenging enough, but the time skips depend on a built-in assumption that you're following all of it and filling in the blanks.
I could see this show appealing to space geeks who obsess over the history of NASA and the U.S. space program. If you set aside the alternate timeline, the period elements at play on the show – everything from the technology to the decor and costumes – offer a visual feast. And the characters are at least entertaining, even as shallow cut-outs.
That's the best I can say. It's hard to give a full-throated endorsement to any show that takes so much time and effort to get on board with in this golden era of "peak TV." For All Mankindis a flashy prestige series for Apple TV+, especially with the name recognition of someone like Moore behind it. But the finished piece is too overstuffed with ideas – some of which are great! – to do any of them justice.