For All Mankind

It takes a while for it to come together, and for us to feel the distinctions and quirks of characters who initially appear to be cardboard 1960s straights. But what at first seems to wander a bit ultimately finds its target and lands.

A lot of the male characters, headlined by Joel Kinnaman and Michael Dorman, are flat and stereotypically predictable, but the show tells its best stories with the women involved in the space program, be it the first class of female astronauts or the wives of the original astronauts. Thankfully, large chunks of episodes are devoted to them. And the space scenes look good too.

It makes the smarter choice to keep the drama as grounded in character choices as possible, with some key overarching “what if?” scenarios that keep the season moving toward a bold new future.

The show ostensibly stars Joel Kinnaman as a Serious Astronaut Man, but the story becomes far more compelling when other characters take the lead. Episode 3 introduces a group of female astronaut trainees who make the series sing.

The strains of having such a huge cast are noticeable; it’s clear that several players, including Aleida, will play a greater role in the future, but the foreshadowing in her storyline doesn’t amount to much more than that. ... Kinnaman, who’s following up a solid turn on Amazon’s Hanna, does great work here.

“For All Mankind” continues to improve in subsequent episodes, propelled in part by an inspiring theme score by Jeff Russo (“Fargo”).

For All Mankind is nowhere near perfect, but it’s deeply watchable — eventually.

It tries to juggle too many characters at once, and doesn’t make any of them as compelling as its core concept. It’s a noble effort, and genuinely stirring at times, but I’m still waiting for it to really take flight.

Give For All Mankind credit for a nicely calibrated takeoff, but five episodes in, it's following the kind of ragged flight plan that doesn't raise hopes that the show has the right stuff to stick the landing.

While the rousing speeches don’t really rouse, 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. ... A solidly, blandly entertaining drama that will be no one’s favourite of the year while also avoiding being anyone’s worst.

There [are] moments where For All Mankind lives up to the show it could be. And it could still become that show; even in the moments where I found myself annoyed by the lack of snap and fizz, I was still curious about where it was going. Its small tastes of an alternate timeline are intriguing.

By the end of its first episode, “For All Mankind” feels too weighty to achieve orbit, but if you stick through the first three episodes, the mood and intent of its story arcs begin to cohere.

Domestic drama occupies a lot of screen time and plays out in ways both predictable and unlikely. For all of its polish and cleverness and suspense, “For All Mankind” ultimately puts the soap in space opera.

Moore and company are clearly NASA nerds on a level that surpasses even mine, so it’s not hard to understand why they might want to take a similarly slow-and-steady approach, filling in every key detail along the way that explains how and why their universe is different from our own. But the differences are where For All Mankind is strongest. The sooner the series emphasizes them, the better.

While the series initial struggles with some expository explanations and divergent subplots, it picks up steam once it finds its focus. Especially in the back half of the season, where the characters and their overlapping arcs start to come to life and the series finally veers towards some intriguing (albeit understated) sci-fi leaps to match the socio-political inventions of its alt-history.

You'll find some urgency as episodes wrap, but not a lot. And there's no doubt that the world For All Mankind wants to build is populated with an almost staggering number of people, each getting bits of story, but outside of the women-going-to-space idea, not a lot of it is particularly interesting.

Things do get mildly more interesting when women are invited to join the space program. ... But where “For All of Mankind” loses itself a bit is in how it unpacks its characters; there’s a lot of pulling back, but not a lot of pushing forward. This results in a pace that is simultaneously plodding and sprawling.

The series firmly and ambitiously casts America as second-best, and wonders how that would make us feel. These are the starting moments for the series, co-created by Matt Wolpert, Ben Nedivi and Ronald D. Moore, who toy with time and history in a manner that’s more contemplative than it is wholly entertaining.

Stately and extremely boring.

If you’re intrigued by that premise—and neither exhausted by ‘60s period pieces where brilliant, flawed men brood as brilliant, perfect women endure retro sexism, nor put off by frequent scenes of mission control guys frantically mashing buttons—For All Mankind is going to be your show. If not, there’s little else to see here.