If you haven't watched For All Mankind, I get it. With so many streaming services available, it can be challenging to keep track of everything. For an added level of difficulty, For All Mankind is on Apple TV+, which has fewer subscribers than all the streamers you have heard of except Starz. Does anyone subscribe to Starz when there aren't any new Outlander episodes?
Although it occasionally veers off into soapy nonsense, at its core, For All Mankind is good sci-fi. The show, created by Ron Moore (Battlestar Galactica), takes place on an alternate timeline in which the Soviet Union reaches the moon before the United States. Each of the current four seasons focuses on one decade of the space race, bringing the show into the 2000s. Because of the alternate timeline, the technology is more advanced than in our history, allowing for plenty of exciting space stuff and solid cliffhangers.
The show has a lot of fun with the things that have changed on the timeline and remained the same. The alternate timeline starts with Sergei Korolev, the father of the Soviet space program, surviving cancer and getting the Russians to the moon ahead of the US. Ted Kennedy cancels his trip to Chappaquiddick and subsequently becomes president. E-mail is called d-mail and a color version of the Apple Newton is used for video calls. Apple has announced that For All Mankind has been renewed for a fifth season and also announced a spin-off. Star City is about the secret military installation of the same name, home to the real-life Soviet space program.
From Apple:
"Star City" is a propulsive, paranoid thriller that takes us back to the key moment in the alt-history retelling of the space race — when the Soviet Union became the first nation to put a man on the moon. But this time, we explore the story from behind the Iron Curtain, showing the lives of the cosmonauts, the engineers and the intelligence officers embedded among them in the Soviet space program, and the risks they all took to propel humanity forward. "Star City" is created by Wolpert, Nedivi, and Moore. Nedivi and Wolpert serve as showrunners and executive produce alongside Moore and Maril Davis of Tall Ship Productions.
I started subscribing to Apple TV+ because of a free trial, but it has become a permanent part of my streaming lineup because of great shows like For All Mankind, Severance, and Shrinking, all three of which you could binge in a month if you don't want to give Apple too much of your money.
Previously: Apple TV+ announces Murderbot adaptation
