The invention of Must TV was one small step for man, one giant leap for TV-bingeing-kind. Luckily we took that step, and now we can bring you great TV picks like Apple TV+’s sci-fi series, For All Mankind.
Ever find yourself daydreaming and pondering history’s big questions, like who milked the first cow, who decided bread is best when cooked twice, and what would have happened if Russia beat the USA to be the first to land on the moon? No, us neither. But Apple TV+ have had a go at answering that last one anyway. In this expensive looking space series, we imagine what might have happened had the first moon landing been achieved by a Soviet named Alexei Leonov, crushing spirits at NASA and triggering a huge effort to catch up with the Soviet Union. The only problem is, the Russians are ahead in more than just moon landings – they’ve got a whole team made up of women and minorities. So, NASA call their HR department and get hiring a whole new team of diverse talent, ready to re-enter the space race.
With this new talent on board, we’re thrown into a galaxy of drama and dysfunction, as women astronauts juggle the pressures of their work and home lives whilst battling to get their male colleagues to recognise and respect their talent. Plus, the US government won’t be satisfied with a mere moon landing – in their never-ending game of one-upmanship they want a space army setting up. Some people are never satisfied, are they?
The first season took off like a kite, rather than a rocket, with hardly any fanfare – The Guardian’s Benjamin Lee said: “the production design is a handsome distraction and even though it might not exactly leap off the screen, Moore’s storytelling is relatively well-honed, meaning that it’s never less than watchable.”
But the second season has really got people talking. Tara Ariano of Vanity Fair says For All Mankind is “well worth your time,” adding that it “understands the deepest roots of American identity, good and bad… such a fascinating watch.” Whilst The Times’s James Jackson says the second season’s “solar storm that threatens the lunar astronauts soon moves things up a gear,” and calls it “one of the better shows on Apple TV+.”
First shown November 2019. You can watch the trailer by pressing play on the show image, or by clicking here.
