For All Mankind (2019– ) User Reviews

Hidden gem.

[Adoshow · 9/10 · 14 February 2024]

For All Mankind is a series that, in general aspects is very good. The first seasons despite having a uchronic point of view, are very well documented, which makes it a series that fits you perfectly if you are interested in the subject. The series develops a narrative focused on NASA, which makes it not balanced and does not show us both sides of the story, something I missed.

I would like to highlight the impeccable production of this series, and the great amount of resources that have been invested in it. During the course of the episodes you will be able to see how the era they are in is represented to perfection, getting even more that you can immerse yourself in their environment.

On the other hand, they also deal in a secondary way with the social inclusion of homosexuals in the 70's or the opportunities of African Americans in the space race, including these arguments perfectly in the overall narrative of the story.

In conclusion, it seems to me a very high level series, with good performances and a level of progression that makes you gradually fall in love with its plot.

Started season 1; so far so good

[sonodocsch · 8/10 · 4 February 2024]

So far, I am enjoying it. Most of us who are space program enthusiasts know about Werner Von Braun's history with the Nazis. That he was brought to the US with his colleagues to work on ballistic missiles (initially with the US Army Ballistic Missile Agency) but during his confrontation with the Congressional Panel, this was not brought up. The US knew about his background, but did not disclose this initially.

Also, there's a woman character - Margo Madison - who at one point says, "I know the code!" This has made me wonder if her character is a shout out to Margaret Hamilton, the woman engineer who led the Apollo guidance computer software development team at the MIT Instrumentation Lab (now the Draper Lab). You can find photos online of her standing next the pile of computer printout of the Apollo computer code.

Know your audience

[CyricTheCynic · 7/10 · 7 September 2022]

This show has a cool premise, that being what if the space race never ended. It's a sort-of alternate reality and it does a good job of weaving in actual historical events with where the timeline diverged. The main problem is that I feel like the show is being pulled in two directions. In one direction, there is the tension of the space race, engineers scrambling to be the first on the moon/mars and dealing with all manner of technical issues in a realistic-ish way. That part of the show I enjoy. Then, for some reason, the show also throws in a bunch of trite interpersonal drama and stupidity. Like inter-marital affairs, people leaking NASA secrets to the soviets, and a CLEARLY unstable drug-addicted astronaut being given solo control of a super important mission. It's like the showrunners thought the show couldn't stand on it's own without dumb drama, as if there couldn't organically be issues and drama in the context of Frigging SPACE. The first season does this better, but by the 2nd/3rd seasons most of the issues come not from unforeseen difficulties of life on the moon/mars but idiots. It really makes me wonder if they just aren't sure who their audience are. The people who like the technical stuff are not going to like the artificial drama, and vise-versa. Pick a lane, show, and stick with it.

One of the best sci-fi series I've ever seen

[Supermanfan-13 · 10/10 · 21 March 2024]

I have to say that I enjoyed For All Mankind a lot more than I thought I would. It's actually become one of my favorite new shows of the last few years. It's a character driven show that takes you into the lives of NASA astronauts and their families. It's a sci-fi show where Russia beat us to the moon and the great space races never ended. It may start off a little slow for some but after a few episodes you'll be hooked. It gets more exciting the further into the show you get. The visuals in this are amazing and how they take real footage and real life videos and intertwine them with fiction into the show is awesome. It's an intense sci-fi series that must be watched by any true sci-fi fan. I hope they continue to more seasons.

Love This Show

[Rob1331 · 10/10 · 7 April 2024]

For All Mankind is one of my favorite sci-fi shows that I've ever seen and that's not hyperbole. It's a sci-fi mystery thriller that takes you down the road of "what if" during the space races. While the show does has its flaw overall it is a very good show. The writing and acting are all terrific, especially Joel Kinnamon. The use of actual footage and real events just make the story that much better. Each episode gets better and better. I put off watching it for some reason and I'm now binging all 3 seasons and can't stop. If you're a sci-fi fan and have been putting it off like me...stop! Go watch this as soon as possible because I promise you won't be disappointed.

One of the best Sci-Fi shows I've seen

[thevirus-5 · 10/10 · 25 March 2024]

One if the best sci-fi series i have seen lately.

I really like the idea what could have been if there were taken more effort in discovering the moon, Mars and our solar system since "we" stepped foot on moon in 1969.

The race to the stars between USA and the Russian would be way more interesting then fighting the cold war.

It feels like this show could be the prequel of "The Expanse", which I also like very well and would recommend.

Also I like the timeline and the way they show how all the following missions could have been and in that time 70s, 80s, 90s.. let it feel so easy to travel to moon and mars...and maybe even further.

I'm very excited for season 5.

Incredible

[borisdcoleman · 10/10 · 13 March 2024]

Wow, just wow everything from the science to the actors is just spot on I mean they hired an astronaut for god's sake only once scene that is off and it's in the trailer when the space shuttle doesn't have its radiator panels open, and the show has got to be the best thing I've laid eyes on if you like space I cannot recommend this show enough only downside is it being on another streaming service but honestly is worth it to pay for the streaming service just for the show alone it's THAT good so if you are a fan of accurate space shows or just space in general and accurate shows WATCH THIS SHOW.

Great when it focuses on core Space Themes. Awful when it loses its key audience in mushy soap themes

[elnexusben · 7/10 · 7 March 2023]

As a big space and scifi fan this show initially excited me. Great alternate history of the US space program envisage by (former Nazi) von Braun continuing to receive massive funding from Congress, staying on the moon, going to Mars etc.

And when the script focuses upon these key engineering and human achievements, it excels, pulling the user into the problem solving they must undertake to get through the various deadly environments outside of Earth.

The drama between the Soviet Union and US is very well done, with some great espionage subplots.

Where this show badly misses the mark is in misunderstanding its key audience, namely space fans like me, by spending endless amounts of time in millenial touchy-feely dialog about relationships (and yes, I'll say it, a HUGE amount of time on completely irrelevant-to-the-core-theme-of-space-flight LGBT issues).

As more seasons have gone on, I have found myself hitting the FFWD button on my remote more and more.

It's a shame that so much time is lost in ticking diversity boxes rather than focusing on the key engineering and human decision-making that is the core of space flight. But in this day and age of box-ticking, I guess one should never get ones hopes much about anything in TV these days.

Overall a 7/10, because, despite these irritations, when it sticks to the main plot, it excels.

Sublime to ridiculous

[dlxmarshall · 6/10 · 23 August 2022]

Season 1 was excellent. Season 2 less so but watchable. Season 3 veered between fleeting moments of brilliance and a preponderance of absurdity and dreadful plot lines, pandering to every demographic they could think of and a general disregard for anything that came before. Still enjoyed it for the most part, just a wasted opportunity.

Mostly entertaining

[sstroudgustatore · 11 December 2023]

Started watching this late in the game, I think it had been on for 3 seasons. It's been a mostly enjoyable watch and being alternative history it's hard to poke holes in the storyline.

That said... Ed Baldwin? Aside from his character becoming insufferable, he's a Korean War vet, season 4 takes place in 2003 and he's still working on Mars? He's got to be pushing 80 now, I'm pretty sure he would have been recalled and retired by now. Additionally he went to Mars as a Helios employee, yet he keeps getting promoted. He's an admiral at this point. I just don't see it.

Similarly, Margo was playing piano moments before the JSC bomb went off. How did she miraculously get spirited out of the building and off to Moscow?

In a mult-season story maybe these are minor quibbles, but they bother me know end.

Season Three suffers. A lot.

[jp-206 · 4/10 · 3 August 2022]

Season one was fantastic, season two was not as good but not awful, season three is a mess. It appears that season three was either written by a poorly coded AI script generator or by a committee of millennials that all needed to cram their two cents into this script. There's way too much soap opera screen time. Poorly conceived "issues" are crammed into the storyline without much sense. People are just randomly barking out their sexual orientation on television without much else happening and apparently the astronauts in this alt timeline aren't very bright. Four stars for an average across all three seasons, before that I would have given it 7 or 8.

Stunned...

[klaudiasjewelrybox · 10/10 · 22 January 2024]

I was struggling with the first few episodes but I am so glad I kept watching. Became one of my favorite tv shows of all times. I will miss this show so much and maybe will revisit it one day - what I don't normally do.

My least favorite season was the third, but it didn't disappoint with the fourth. I think the magic is in the characters and the tales about dreams of every human being. The music is absolutely amazing, starting out with old times songs and ending with a really cool track at season 4. There is something magnificent to follow a human beings from childhood or young adulthood to elder years - that is one aspect that is amazingly done in this TV show.

Love love love this show

[shannonehhh · 10/10 · 7 February 2024]

I really hope they're able to continue it, after this season 4 finale. I'd love to see what direction they try to take it. I'm not sure why the review requires an entire essay, so I'm just going to copy and paste.

I really hope they're able to continue it, after this season 4 finale. I'd love to see what direction they try to take it. I'm not sure why the review requires an entire essay, so I'm just going to copy and paste.

I really hope they're able to continue it, after this season 4 finale. I'd love to see what direction they try to take it. I'm not sure why the review requires an entire essay, so I'm just going to copy and paste.

Good show

[chadscott-64753 · 10/10 · 21 January 2024]

I really like the show but some things don't make sense , like Ed's wife being a bar owner and all of a sudden next season she has a hotel in space ... cmon , she had nothing to do with space but now she's a huge part of mars missions . I'll watch the show to the end but there's a lot of stuff that doesn't make sense. I'm all for a woman president but the lady they have playing her I don't believe . I don't know why eds wife had to sleep with Danny and how all the kids just become astronauts and end up on mars , I guess what I'm saying the most is that I don't like Ed's wife's part of the show.

Great and exciting adventure into space!

[qssrsqpbmg · 10/10 · 2 February 2024]

This adventure was thrilling to the very end. The progression was, for the most part accurate, the story line was believeable as was depicted in their timeline. Was well worth the time spent on this story. I believe that I would do this again given the way you described this story. Job well done!!! I hope that you will find a way to do another story like this one in the future. Sometimes I felt like I was being thrown into the mix of a new adventure with the same old crowd. I hope that you can send a notice when you have another exciting adventure to share with me. Thank you for the journey on time!!!

Ups and downs

[arc-67711 · 6/10 · 15 June 2022]

1st season was awesome.. Suspense, action, space and humor.. 2nd season became an Earthbound family/race/lgbtq driven soap opera.. It had it's moments toward the end of the season but overall it was a letdown....

Wonderful series ever I have watched

[ahmetorkungedik · 10/10 · 9 March 2024]

For all mankind series is the most perfect one among its types. Should continue till forever! Really like the scenario and parallel universe with current. Just feels like dream and drift into the the era. I really congratulate the writers, artists and whoever made effort on this. I enjoyed each of the part of the series and lived in it. Ed is reflecting my personality at all :) I found myself on him in deed. Season 4 is finished as I expected but producing of tue scenes are wonderful. I gave it 10 stars to it without any issue. It deserve 10 on 10. I am looking for session 5. Great job guys! Keep up your good work :)

Started good, becoming hard to watch.

[leh0287 · 6/10 · 26 July 2022]

First let me say that my rating is only as high as a 6 out of respect for the first season. Last season was weird and had unnecessary drama, and season 3 is awful. I would rate season 1 a 9, season 2 and 6, and season 3 a 2.

As I'm sitting here watching season 3, I'm wondering how these idiots have had the discipline and fortitude to make it through the military and into space. Almost all the characters are highly dysfunctional. Danny is obsessed with his dead best friend's mom (that whole thing was just weird and out of the blue), he's jealous of Ed for getting along with his own (ex) wife, and he's clearly about to become addicted to pain killers. How is this the kind of person who NASA chooses to go to Mars? Don't they do psych assessments? He lost his parents in a horrific way and is clearly screwed up because of it. Stay home and work on your stuff, Danny.

Then in episode 6, a new character decides that his interview about being on Mars is the perfect time to tell the world he's gay. WHAT?!?! Again.. how do these people make it on this mission? I can't imagine what it had to be like for his character and I hate how he's being treated, but what an idiot. You're on a mission to freaking Mars, your house isn't working and it's your job to fix it, you're already in a tense environment with Russians breathing down your next, so why not make a stupid decision. Even though he shouldn't be treated the way he is being treated, it's dumb to risk the mission to make a point. Was he not trained in the army that the mission comes first?

So annoyed with the direction of this show. It's gone from great to a stupid decision factory. You're throwing away a great plot for unnecessary, stupid drama.

First season was good...

[sammy-gibson · 5/10 · 14 July 2023]

The first season got me all excited. I liked the idea of the show, and the story was great. Acting was great, special effects were great.

Pretty cool alternate reality premise too. It would have been nice to see the show go beyond Mars. Possibly even better technology being invented out of necessity.

However, after the first season it really started being more and more about politically correct ideologies. By the end of the third season it was pretty tough to muttle through.

I can accept some of that in moderation. Although, in this case I felt it went a little overboard.

I would have been happier with more space race, and less political correctness.

Wow, just wow....

[walterhoward · 10/10 · 25 January 2024]

You might view this series as a precursor to the Expanse. Separated of course by a few hundred years. There is so much about this show that puts it apart from everything else in the media. Some reviewers say this is an alternate history show but it's used only as a gimmick to have the U. S. and Russia put a lot more resources into the Space Program so it expands instead of being left to wither like it has in the current history. If you are unhappy with alternative history just view it as what might be possible starting in the year 2040 after we get our act together here on Earth (hopefully).

1) It's full of surprises and never gets boring. I hate predictable stories. You won't be able to predict this one.

2) The technical accuracy is there except for the availability of fission and fusion engines (who knows, if we stopped wasting money on weapons and warfare maybe we could have this technology by now and, well, maybe we do. Wink wink, nudge nudge)

3) The characters are all deep and well fleshed out.

Congratulations to the writers, producers, actors, set designers, costume designers and CGI artists and programmers. I frankly don't know how you pulled this off. It must have been a lot of work but the end result was the best TV series ever.

This is now my favorite television series of all time.

The last scene of the last season left me with tears in my eyes it was just so cool.

Started amazing! Fell apart in the 3rd season

[Mike854 · 9/10 · 4 February 2024]

Will always love the first two seasons in the first two seasons we are introduced to very possible alternate timeline where the USA is humbled by the Russians landing on the moon before Apollo 11. And while there is a lot of character drama that other reviews have criticized negatively I don't believe that it detracts from the story it actually enhances it. Without that development we wouldn't be affected by the loss of Gordo and Tracy. But in the third season we end up with a lot of current real world propaganda rammed down our throats. I dislike having political issues forced upon me when I'm trying to be entertained. If you need indoctrination during your entertainment time then enjoy the last two seasons. I was disappointed to see how badly the showrunners treated Ed Baldwin.

Spectacular

[dsgmdvj · 10/10 · 29 January 2024]

This is one of the best pieces of TV to have ever been created.

The series take you through an alternative reality where the Russians won the space race to the moon, but the race continued with the exploration of the moon and beyond... The race never stopped!

This story is equally driven by the beautifully flawed characters (with whom you experience the heights of triumph and the lowest lows of tragedy) and also but the main plot of the story, that of the struggles of the human race to explore and conquer space; and the balance of the two is masterful. What this show has done uniquely though, is made the audience feel the absolute wonder and majesty that I imagine the people watching the first human walking on the moon once felt. It's mesmerising and spell binding and is the best piece of television I have ever seen. What an emotional rollercoaster!

Enough said, go watch it! Honestly....

This is not a documentary

[johan-magnuseriksson-185-97383 · 9/10 · 2 November 2019]

I've seen a lot of comments about it not being historically correct. They should look up the meaning of drama. ;). It's a thought experiment, and an interesting one at that.

It's not trying to rewrite history, it's trying to answer the question. What if?

Space soap opera

[northernpaladin · 7/10 · 18 November 2021]

The first season starts slow but by the 3rd episode it gets into its stride and really grabs hold of the alternative history idea and goes with it. Good characters, good story arcs and good balance between space/the moon, launch control and home. Well worth the watch.

The second season is trite daytime TV soap opera. The amount of space/moon drama is minimal and boring. The mission control stuff is characters in board meetings mouthing terrible dialogue and making decisions that just would not happen. The bulk of the second season however is family soap opera the like of which I haven't seen since the 1980's, boring implausible plot lines and cringeworthy dialogue. It's like someone said "well the first season was pretty good, let's try and see if we can completely screw up season two".

Watch it for season one, don't bother with season two.

Realistic alternate history Sci-Fi with too much soap opera

[glumski · 8/10 · 30 October 2022]

(At the time I'm writing this, three seasons have aired and a fourth one is confirmed.) As an enthusiast for space flight, For All Mankind is an obvious fit for me. The first season with its far-extended Space Race, with Wernher von Braun, the Saturn V, and the Apollo program, was very special to see. Admittedly, it took the series a few episodes to properly take off, but when it finally did, it delivered fantastic characters, an interestig plot, a furious finale, and -- most of all -- perfectly legitimate and realistic depictions of space flight.

The second season continued in a similar vein. Character plot lines continued, the space race continued, the politics continued. The space flight kept its level of realism, though it progressed far beyond what was actually possible with our circumstances.

The third season I felt devolved into too much soap opera. Character-driven plot lines have always been a firm and important part of For All Mankind, but in the third season they began to eclipse the space stuff. There is one episode in particular which could and should have been about strange new worlds but instead spent three quarters of the time on a character being gay and the last quarter on astronauts being absolutely unprofessional. (Both themes actually occur frequently throughout the entire series, but they're typically only part of the narrative, not its entire focus to the detriment of the space stuff.) Nevertheless, the third season delivered a nice finale as well, and I'm eager to see what is going to happen in season four (and hopefully in future seasons as well).

Apart from the soap opera extending its reach, I also have to criticise a certain naiveté. The universe of For All Mankind in many ways feels much more favourable than our reality, and while at many times that feels perfectly reasonable, at others it is a bit overdone.

What impressed me quite a lot, however, is how well the series manages to span the many decades. Starting in '69, the third season is set in the nineties, with the final scene announcing the fourth season to be in 2003. We see the characters age (and, in quite many cases, die), see their children grow up, and that actually works incredibly well.

And, of course, the realistic and genuinely reasonable space stuff is just fantastic!