For All Mankind (2019—), AppleTV
After watching Star City (2026) we decided to give For All Mankind — its parent show — another go. Then we got captured in its gravity well, and have spent a whole month in orbit. Or, to be slightly less astronautical about the whole thing, we have been binge-watching.
Its set-up is a counterfactual: Russia has won the race to put a man on the Moon, and quickly follows that up by putting a woman on the Moon. One of the interesting things about For All Mankind is that it takes this second premise as seriously as the first. Its thesis is that this would have forced the American space programme (and, by extension, all aspects of American society) to up its diversity game — not just from the bottom—up, but also from the top—down. Women, people of colour, immigrants and gay people are all explicitly knitted into the hierarchy, and — over time, but over less time than has been the case in our universe — they frequently reach the top. Pleasingly, this is not just a limp and lazy way for show-runners to signal that they have all the right values. Instead, the writers have had a genuinely good go at thinking about the ramifications: how having a range of perspectives at or near the top of the tree might have really changed the course of history.
Meanwhile, the Russian victory means that the space race remains a race, with the USA and the USSR both fully committed to it through the decades. They compete to build bases and reach new planets, and fight Cold War battles on the lunar surface. In turn, the impetus towards constant technological progress prolongs the existence of the USSR by keeping the Russian economy buoyant.
The seasons (there are five so far, and a sixth is in the works) are chunked by decade; the first takes place in the 1970s, the second in the 1980s, and so on. But each focuses on a limited time period within that decade, picking one resonant story: the second season is set entirely within six months in 1983. This means that each new season leaps forward with <ahem> a giant step; all the necessary background information (pop culture, non-space news, celebs) is filled in by a montage at the beginning of the opening episode. This sense of momentum somehow adds to its bingeable appeal, and the leaps forward mean that the show has quickly become generational. We are now watching the children and grandchildren of the original characters. In less talented hands this would make things overly soapy (an endless parade of teenagers screaming ‘you don’t understand me, or my spaceship!’) while making the world too small, and too populated with familiar faces. But in this case, it just means that you feel the full weight of the history.
For All Mankind has the issues that any long-running show has: the writing deteriorates over time, and the plot twists become increasingly coarse. But it’s interesting how the time jumps help mitigate a lot of the other possible problems. Repetitive storylines can be jumped over; boring stuff can be backfilled in the montage; new characters can just show up, already fully integrated, in a new season. We aren’t forced to understand those over-involved soap opera inter-relationships that look like a polycule org chart.
But the focus on the two generational families — the Baldwins and the Stevens — does present a Nepo Baby problem. No matter which season you’re watching, there is always at least one Baldwin and at least one Stevens at the centre of events. This is the problem that sunk Star Wars: ‘No, I am your father’ was a great plot twist (something similar worked for Frank Herbert in Dune too, which I suspect is where George Lucas stole it from), but it meant that instead of being a story about fighting oppression in the name of democracy, Star Wars became a dynastic squabble between generations of Skywalkers.
It also drags the show into a contentious debate: how valid is the ‘Great Man’ theory of history? Astronauts were, in the early days, mostly test pilots -- rule-breaking, risk-taking, ornery, egotistical ‘selfish pricks’, as astronaut Molly Cobb puts it. It takes a certain mentality to sit in a Superloo propped up on a tower of explosives that will hurl you into a deadly void; as Tom Wolfe put it in The Right Stuff (1979), ‘What is it, I wondered, that makes a man willing to sit up on top of an enormous Roman candle and wait for someone to light the fuse?’ The space race made heroes of people — men, in our reality — who were willing to sacrifice their lives in the cause of exploration. But, of course, they could only do that because, back at Mission Control, there was a team of brilliant and rigorous engineers. The ludicrous gamble of space travel is underwritten by painstaking preparation and thorough regulations; the great men in their Superloos can only do what they do by relying on other people, people who don’t usually become famous but who have extraordinary talents and competencies.
For All Mankind, in fairness, addresses this head-on. ‘Nixon’s Women’, a group of female astronauts introduced in Season 1, are all outlasted by super-astronaut Ed Baldwin, increasingly doddery and ancient as the seasons go by. But the other longest-running (and now most doddery) character is Margo Madison, an engineering prodigy who reaches the top at NASA. (Margo was mentored by Wernher von Braun; happily, Tom Lehrer and his song also exist in the For All Mankind universe).
This marriage of pioneering bravado and painstaking systems is central to space travel. It is also, as we saw in Fargo this month, a particularly American tension: the ‘heroism’ of the Founding Fathers versus the egalitarian democracy they claimed to be creating [citation needed]. For All Mankind is very interested in this tension; the confrontation between individualistic American capitalism and state-controlled Soviet communism is one of the main plot engines. More broadly, it constantly juxtaposes daring with caring; pushing forward, and staying behind; discovering, and maintaining. Neither is shown as being necessarily more valorous; both are shown as being entirely critical.
SPOILER ALERT
Once For All Mankind settles Mars in the fictional twenty-first century, the commentary on the founding of America becomes explicit. In American science fiction the colonisation of Mars is frequently deployed as a metaphor for the early US; but this time, the literal USA is the bureaucratic, stifling hegemon from which the new colony is struggling to escape. The independence movement arises from the entrepreneurial black market in alliance with the aged Ed Baldwin, who has been told by the powers that be that he is now too old to play the space cowboy. This ‘Great Man’ is driven by little more than petulant, bruised ego; but his galvanising effect is undeniable. As Molly Cobb went on to point out, “selfish pricks change the world”. And the careful state is equally flawed; Margo Madison is chewed up and spat out by successive governments. Ultimately, what For All Mankind seems to be saying is — not unexpectedly — that it really does take all mankind to achieve anything worthwhile.
Much like making a decent TV show, in fact.
Letterboxd Diary
Tobias Sturt: All this mucking about in outer space hasn’t left much time for movie-watching, and what we have watched has been somewhat underwhelming. It has included Hitchcock’s remake of his own film, The Man Who Knew Too Much (1956); and Bernardo Bertolucci’s The Sheltering Sky (1990). Both of these are set in North Africa in roughly the same timeframe, which at least conjured the amusing idea of them happening in each other’s backgrounds.
The Sheltering Sky contained less rear projection; but on the other hand, it would have been much enlivened by some spies and shenanigans. It’s very much style over substance, with some laudable location scouting and an awful lot of ACTING. There is also an awful lot of nudity from both John Malkovich and Debra Winger. All of this somewhat detracts from what I assume was supposed to be an existentialist mediation on something or other.
We also watched a film that, paradoxically, wasn’t quite enough style over substance: Nicolas Winding Refn’s Drive (2011). It’s a thoroughly enjoyable film, capitalising on a stacked cast and the considerable screen charms of Ryan Gosling and Carey Mulligan. But it could have done with a little more of the tarmac desert of neon nighttime Los Angeles. I kept thinking of Walter Hill’s Driver (1978), which is a very similar set up and — despite Refn’s horror-inflected violence — manages to have a much colder, harder, more nihilist vision. The two would make an excellent double bill though, maybe with Edgar Wright’s Baby Driver (2017) as a chaser. Or you could pair it with The Fall Guy (2024) for two very different personifications of Ryan Gosling as a stunt driver.
However, some of my underwhelmed response was down to the fact that the only version of the movie we could find on Amazon Prime had been re-soundtracked by… Zane Lowe? I have no idea how competent Zane Lowe is as a DJ, but on this evidence he shouldn’t so much give up the day job as be actively barred from the night job. Why you would inflict this vapid autotuned sludge on a movie with (apparently -- we didn’t bloody get to hear it) a critically acclaimed and influential original soundtrack, I have no idea. Whenever a new wedge of entirely forgettable 2010s pop landed in the middle of a scene you could almost hear the director screaming.
I also watched the fifth most successful film of all time: Spider-Man: Brand New Day (2026). It is a Spider-Man film and if you like those, you’ll probably like it, as does most of the rest of the world. If you don’t you won’t, and there we are. The most interesting thing about it to me is that Marvel films are now moving beyond aping the structure of the comics world between movies — building their Cinematic Universe to match the inter-connection of Marvel’s comic books — and are now making films that consciously use the structure of monthly comics. Brand New Day is essentially a little three-issue arc, with guest appearances in different issues: The Punisher in one, Bruce Banner in another, and then the big reveal of the ‘villain’ in the third (and yes, I did do the little nerd *gasp* when their name was revealed, and I’m not ashamed. Much.) They are finally moving beyond the ‘Save The Cat’ three-act structure, and are trying different ways to tell a story. Albeit the same stories about superheroes.
Playlist
Tobias Sturt: Here’s my favourite ten tracks for this month.
‘First Of All’ - Japanther
Where else to start but with First Of All, first of all?
‘Swim’ - Madder Rose
I had completely forgotten this track, which means that when Spotify unearthed it for me again I was delivered the early ‘90s in an immediate Proustian rush.
‘Heartbeats’ - The Knife
I knew the José Gonzalez version, like anyone else who ever watched multicoloured balls bouncing down a San Francisco street, but I’m not sure I’d ever heard the original before, bizarrely.
‘Fossils’ - THAO
There’s also a new track that features a collaboration with Tune-Yards and The Linda Lindas, which is really one for the sickos, but I liked the off-kilter funk of this track.
‘More Bad Miles Of Road’ - Little Barrie
A lovely, dirty, slinky bit of road trip soundtrack
‘One Stop Shop (For A Fading Revolution)’ - Twen
A splendid piece of rousing indie rock
‘Tsitsutsa Tsigesv’ - Agalisiga
A beautiful, lonesome piece of Cherokee country folk
‘Atomized’ - Andrew Bird
I was put off Andrew Bird because the first I ever heard of him was in one of Jeffrey Brown’s infuriating biographical comics. This suggests I may have to reconsider. Still hate that comic though.
‘Pearls’ - Styrofoam Winos
Big fan of the way this song keeps breaking off to just repeat euphonious words.
‘Down On Love’ - Sam and Louise Sullivan
Summer is the time for sweet and groovy ‘70s power pop
The whole playlist is also on Spotify:
For more moon-walking:
Secondary world
As a toddler, one of my favourite games was collecting rocks. This involved walking slowly around the garden picking up pebbles and bringing them back indoors.