I love dramas that are set in the recent past like Mad Men, which recreates the 1960s in painstaking detail. For All Mankind is drama series set in alternate history of the Space Race. What if the Russians beat the Americans to the Moon in 1969? What would be the impact on NASA? The United States races to catch up especially when the Russians seek to set up a permanent moon base.

We witness this alternative timeline through the eyes of a group of astronauts and their families. We have a core group of characters, Ed and Karen Baldwin, Gordon and Tracy Stevens, Ellen Waverly, Margo Madison,Danielle Poole and Molly Cobb. These characters will live through the events that as the Space Race and the Cold War carries on into the 1970s and 1980s.

We see the social changes that this will come. For example, NASA decides to recruit and train female astronauts after the Russians land a female cosmonaut on the Moon. In our timeline, NASA was the bastion of (white) male heroics and adventure. No women were allowed. Sally Ride was the first American astronaut in space in 1983.

There is also the added tension of hiding your true self once you become a public figure. One of female astronauts will have to hide her sexuality, because even in this alternate timeline, she cannot come out as gay.

For All Mankind should have a higher profile, as it has a talented cast with a great story to tell. If it where on Netflix or Amazon, it would be a series that everyone would be talking about. Season 2 has just ended on Apple TV. I cannot wait to see the next season which will be set in the 1990s.