Movies & TV For All Mankind Television’s Most Underrated Sci-Fi Drama For All Mankind Just Keeps Getting Better With Age The show’s decade leaps between seasons have reaped surprising fruits. By Lacy Baugher Milas | Published on March 26, 2026 Credit: Apple TV Comment 0 Share New Share Credit: Apple TV There are dozens of television series that critics always insist are the best programs that not enough people are watching. But none of them are For All Mankind, a show that’s so good it’s almost offensive that it hasn’t achieved the widespread mainstream success it so clearly deserves. An alternate reality science fiction drama that ticks virtually every box when it comes to what a prestige series in the streaming era is supposed to be and do, it mixes cinematic visuals, rich character work, and gutsy storytelling to create something that’s both deeply heartfelt and intellectually surprising. And it just keeps getting better and better.  Five seasons in, it’s rare to see any really good television series consistently maintain the level of quality that characterized its first installments. Actors depart, storytelling gets lazier, narrative twists become more telegraphed, and there’s often a sense that by this point, pretty much everyone is kind of phoning it in. By all rights, these problems should be exacerbated even further on a show like For All Mankind, which rockets its characters forward a decade at the conclusion of each season, creating a complicated set of new challenges and problems that each outing must unravel on its own terms.  The series’ alternate version of history revolves around a simple question: What if the Soviet Union had reached the moon first during the space race of 1969? And in exploring the butterfly effect from that one seemingly simple change, For All Mankind has grown into a complex depiction of the best and worst of all that humanity is capable of. Some things turn out to be very different. Some feel remarkably the same. Like any story, there is triumph and loss, joy and grief, failure and perseverance. Choices have far-reaching consequences, the fallout from those decisions can take decades to fully manifest, and small changes are repeatedly proven capable of radically disrupting the future.  Season five is perhaps the show’s most ambitious yet, not necessarily in terms of storytelling specifics—though it does feature a steadily expanding Mars base and a further push into space beyond the Red Planet—but in its larger sense of self, unflinchingly embracing the reality that most of the original characters we all initially tuned into root for are no longer part of its world. For All Mankind’s intergenerational scope has always been one of its best and bravest elements, allowing beloved favorites to exit its canvas naturally even as it introduces younger faces who slowly evolve into a fresh crop of leads. With so many of the show’s original old guard now absent, the show’s fifth season is one that is deeply marked by change, forced to purposefully look to the future even as it honors its own past. Legendary astronaut Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinnaman in some truly hilarious old-age makeup), one of just three characters from the series’ first season who are still around in its present day, is straight up elderly now, his advanced age and failing health a subplot the show approaches realistically and with grace. Characters like Kelly Baldwin (Cynthy Wu) and Aleida Rosales (Coral Peña), once part of the show’s upstart younger generation, have grown into middle-aged leaders, taking on many of the same roles their mentors Ed and Margo (Wrenn Schmidt) once did. New faces include recent transplants to Happy Valley and the children of established characters whose stories are already familiar to us, even if we still need to get to know them in their own right. The result is a season in transition, but one that confidently builds toward a thrilling new future. The show’s fourth season concluded with a coterie of Mars residents hijacking a literal asteroid to secure their right to determine their own destiny. Season five picks up almost a decade later, in an alternate 2012 where Happy Valley is thriving. Now home to countless base workers and their families, tech billionaire Dev Ayesa’s (Edi Gathegi) original vision of a self-sufficient colony seems closer than ever. The base is a flourishing community, complete with a vibrant central marketplace, genuine restaurants (Ilya’s clandestine bar has gotten a major upgrade), and sprawling domed fields full of crops. A small group of teens—including Ed’s grandson Alex (Sean Kaufman) and season four hero Miles Dale’s (Toby Kebbell) daughter, Lily (Ruby Cruz)—are graduating high school, collecting Mars High diplomas before heading to Earth for college or elsewhere on the base for jobs. When compared to the conditions the earliest Mars astronauts faced back in season three, this is practically paradise.  Yet, despite its growth, Mars is still subject to the rules of Earthbound politics and economics, and the leaders of the global M-6 alliance rarely make choices with the Red Planet’s best interests in mind. As the series’ trailers have already revealed, a primary subplot of this season revolves around the ways in which Mars is attempting to separate itself—both politically and otherwise—from Earth, and the show wrestles with complex questions about exploitation, ambition, independence, and authoritarianism.  Thuggish military police called peacekeepers wander the base halls in the name of allegedly maintaining order among the residents, and an underground independence group known as the Sons and Daughters of Mars is growing increasingly restless under their rule. This situation is further exacerbated by a mysterious murder that everyone except new peacekeeping officer Celia Boyd (Mireille Enos) seems remarkably eager to pin on North Korean defector Lee Jung-Gil (C.S. Lee). And as tensions slowly rise between these multiple factions, another space race begins, as American company Helios and its Russian counterpart Kuragin rapidly pull together missions to reach Saturn’s moon Titan, both convinced that it remains the best chance of discovering intergalactic life.  In the eight episodes available to screen for critics (out of a total of ten), the show fearlessly tackles a variety of issues—AI taking human jobs, the looming threat of police violence, xenophobia towards refugees and migrants—that feel all too relevant to our own present day. There are cliffhangers, sacrifices, and nearly every character is challenged in unforeseen and unexpected ways. The cast remains as impeccable as ever throughout, but it’s the Baldwin clan that serves as the season’s beating heart.  Kinnaman has never really garnered the critical kudos he deserves for this role, but his performance is the emotional spine upon which the entirety of season five’s larger transition hangs. He tackles Ed’s twilight years with gusto, doubling down on both his most admirable traits and his most irritatingly reckless tendencies. Wu makes the most of her increased screen time this season—and has honestly never felt more like her father’s daughter—as we witness Kelly attempt to find a balance between family life and her role on Happy Valley’s larger scientific team. And while much of season five is built around introducing Mars’s new Millennial cohort, Kaufman’s Alex is a true standout. As the very definition of a legacy character—he was born on Mars in season three, and a child living on the colony during season four—Happy Valley is his inheritance in more ways than one, and it’s extremely satisfying to watch him carry on his grandfather’s legacy of making both rash decisions and extremely good trouble. For All Mankind has occasionally struggled when it comes to writing younger male characters (ugh, the Stevens brothers), but as a figure who will almost surely play a key role in leading this franchise well beyond this season, Alex is a slam dunk.  Deftly navigating four decades of established series history even as it pushes itself into a new era is no small—nor particularly easy feat—but For All Mankind tackles its latest round of growing pains with grace, giving its second-generation characters key arcs and allowing its third to slowly come into their own in very different ways than their parents did. For All Mankind is still the best show that far too many people aren’t watching. But maybe this outing will finally change all that.[end-mark] The post Television’s Most Underrated Sci-Fi Drama <i>For All Mankind</i> Just Keeps Getting Better With Age appeared first on Reactor.