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Released by: Sony Pictures
Released on: November 10th, 2023.
Director: Various
Cast: Joel Kinnaman, Michael Dorman, Sarah Jones, Shantel VanSanten
Year:2019
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For All Mankind: Season One – Movie Review:
Created by Ronald D. Moore, Matt Wolpert and Ben Nedivi for Apple TV+, For All Mankind is set in an alternate reality where the global space race never ended.
The series begins in 1969 when a Soviet cosmonaut named Alexei Leono makes history as the first man to make it to The Moon. Understandably upset that they were beaten to the punch, the heads of NASA, under director Wernher Von Braun (Colm Feore), make a point of upping their game to not only catch up to the Soviets, but also to surpass them. They also decide to make their space program more diverse, by training not only white men, but women and people of color, in their astronaut program. When Apollo 11 crashes on the moon, disgraced astronaut Edward Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman), previously reassigned after smack talking NASA while drunk, hopes to get back in the game.
Elsewhere, Nixon wants to build an American military base on The Moon, leading to tensions with Von Braun, giving Baldwin an opportunity to get back in by publicly criticizing his former boss.
Subplots involving Deke Slayton and his efforts to bring female astronauts on board come into play, while the end of The Vietnam War is also a factor. Of course, politics also becomes a big factor here, with plenty of twists and turns within NASA's leadership and The United States' own government causing drama and tension.
There’s a lot more to this than just that, of course, as this sprawling collection of ten hour long episodes gets deep into the drama and suspense inherent in that admittedly basic set up. The subplots involving the new astronauts recruited for the program are interesting and allow for other characters to be brought into the fold, and the basic premise for the show is a good one. The writing is really solid here and the production values are also quite strong, resulting in a show that turns out to be a really well-told mix of science fiction, political intrigue and very human drama.
Performances are strong across the board. Colm Feore impresses as the NASA boss, while Joel Kinnamen does really good work as Baldwin. Shentel VanSanten is well-cast as Baldwin's wife, Karen, who also operates a bar that the astronauts tend to hang out int. We also get Michael Dorman cast as Gordon Stevens, the best friend of Baldwin's character and a fellow astronaut, and Sarah Jones as Tracy, Gordon's wife who winds up joining the female astronaut recruitment program.
For All Mankind: Season One – Blu-ray Review:
The AVC encoded 2.00.1 1080p anamorphic widescreen transfers given the episodes in this set do a really good job of showing off the series' intended look. Detail is very strong, it's often times very impressive. There are some minor problems with mpeg compression artifacts and minor aliasing but no heavy edge enhancement while black levels stay strong and shadow detail remains consistently impressive. Skin tones look nice and lifelike, never too pink or waxy, and never showing off any problems with the authoring or encoding. The discs have been encoded quite well, generally speaking, and the picture quality is strong enough.
For All Mankind: Season One arrives on Blu-ray with an English language 16-bit DTS-HD 5.1 Master Audio track. The lossless track provided here has some really good ambience and it's basically reference quality. Channel separation is more constant than you might expect and there's enough of it here to ensure that you'll notice it. Dialogue is perfectly clear and the levels are consistently well balanced. The soundtrack has good depth to it and the sound effects an appropriate amount of punch. The low end is tight and strong without burying the dialogue and the score has good range and presence to it as well. In short, the sound on this release is amazing. Optional subtitles are provided in Spanish, French, English SDH.
There are no extras included in this set.
For All Mankind: Season One - The Final Word:
The first season of For All Mankind is good stuff, a well-written and tightly constructed mix of suspense and drama with strong production values and a very good cast. While the Blu-ray release from Sony definitely would have benefited from some extra features (the story behind making this show is probably very interesting), that didn’t happen, but the presentation is very strong, making this worth a look for fans of the series.