The verdict
The best alternate history on television, and a genuinely moving series about what ambition costs.
Quick facts
- Years aired
- 2019 to
- Based on
- an alternate history in which the Soviets reach the Moon first
- Where to watch
- Apple TV+
- Genre
- Alternate history science fiction
Creators Ronald D. Moore, Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert
For All Mankind is an alternate history series that asks one question and then follows it for fifty years: what if the Soviet Union had reached the Moon first? The answer is not a darker version of the twentieth century. It is a century in which the space race never stopped, and the cost of that is the subject of the series.
The idea behind it
The series begins with a Soviet cosmonaut planting a flag on the Moon, and the American response is not to give up but to escalate, permanently. NASA’s budget never gets cut, the lunar base becomes a colony, Mars becomes the next argument, and the twentieth century is rewritten decade by decade.
What makes it more than a premise is that the series is interested in the bill. Every advance costs somebody something: marriages, careers, lives, and in one case a whole town. The show is not a fantasy about a better space programme. It is about what a country would have to be like to sustain one.
The story, spoiler-light
Each season jumps roughly a decade. The first is Apollo era, with Ed Baldwin and Gordo and Tracy Stevens as astronauts, Margo Madison as a young flight controller, and Danielle Poole arriving as one of the first women in the corps. Later seasons move to a lunar base, then to a private space boom, then to Mars, with the children of the original cast carrying the story.
Two things are worth knowing before you start. The alternate timeline is researched properly, and the changes accumulate: a different president, a different Cold War, a different set of wars. And the series is unembarrassed about melodrama, which is part of the pleasure and occasionally the weakness.
What makes it science fiction
The engineering is taken seriously. Rockets, lunar habitats, radiation, the physical difficulty of living somewhere with no air: the series respects all of it, and the technology improves at a plausible rate rather than at the speed of plot. That restraint is what makes the alternate history convincing.
It is also, quietly, a series about institutions. The most interesting characters are often the ones inside NASA arguing about budgets and safety margins, and the show understands that the difference between a triumph and a catastrophe is usually a decision made in a meeting six months earlier.
Who should watch it, and who should skip it
Watch it if you like the space programme, alternate history, or competence under pressure. It is also unusually good at the thing most science fiction avoids, which is showing people getting older and being changed by what they did when they were young.
Skip it if you want hard science fiction without human drama, or if you dislike a series that will happily spend a season on a marriage. The politics is deliberately liberal and the sentiment is unguarded, which is not to everyone’s taste.
Where to watch it
It is an Apple TV+ original, and the link below goes to it on Amazon. The series is built for a long run rather than a single sitting, and the seasons are best watched in order.
The verdict
The best alternate history on television, and a genuinely moving series about what ambition costs. Start with the first season and give it four episodes.
Frequently asked questions
What is the premise of For All Mankind?
An alternate history in which the Soviet Union lands on the Moon first, so the space race never ends. The series follows the consequences across decades, from Apollo to a lunar base to Mars.
Do I need to watch the seasons in order?
Yes. Each season jumps about a decade and the cast ages with it, so the story is continuous even though the setting keeps changing.
Is it scientifically accurate?
The engineering is treated with unusual respect for a drama, and the alternative timeline is researched rather than improvised. It is still a drama, so the characters survive things that would kill them in reality.
Where can I watch it?
It is an Apple TV+ series, and the link on this page goes to it on Amazon.
Is it based on a book or a real programme?
It is an original series. It uses the real Apollo programme as its starting point and then diverges, with real historical figures appearing at the edges of the story.