For All Mankind season 1 Blu-ray is worth the purchase

For All Mankind has been one of Apple TV+’s biggest success stories. Now, the first season of the sci-fi drama has hit Blu-ray, so is it worth buying?

One of the first launch shows for Apple TV+ in 2019, For All Mankind has a fantastic hook to it. The series is an alternate history take with the point of divergence being the Soviet Union landing a man on the moon before the United States could in 1969.

With such a blow to public morale, both the space race and the Cold War took new directions. NASA is given a bigger budget as not only are they pushed to establish a full moon colony before the Soviets but beat the USSR to Mars. This leads to “ripple effects” such as Ted Kennedy being elected President in 1972 and further changes to history.

The main plot line focuses on the astronauts from Ed Baldwin (Joel Kinneman), Gordo Stevens (MIchael Dorman), and others to how NASA allows females to rise up, such as Tracy Stevens (Sarah Jones), Molly Cobb (Sonya Walger),  Ellen Wilson (Jodi Balfour) and Ed’s wife Karen (Shantel VanSanten) getting involved in things.

The series is terrific, mixing the elements of the astronaut’s personal lives with this much different world and building to a thrilling finale. While the later seasons get even better, this first year is still a stunning sci-fi drama that never fails to put the human element first.

The series comes to Blu-ray in a four-disc set with all ten episodes. The 1080p high-definition picture is fantastic, selling the space-born effects and pops nicely. The English 5.1 DTS-HD sound allows the dialogue to come in crisp, along with some nice music too with subtitles in English, French and Spanish. This is as great as watching it on TV, and the visuals pop beautifully.

For All Mankind season 1 Blu-ray features

Here is where the set sadly disappoints, as there are no bonus features at all. It would have been great to see some featurettes on making this world, how they used some old footage for the altered voices of real-life figures and the special effects work. At the least, some deleted scenes would have been good.

If you don’t have Apple TV+ and want to see what the buzz on this show is about, then the Blu-Ray is a good buy. However, the lack of extra features does hurt and keeps it from being a true must-buy. So maybe those who want physical media more can go for it, but otherwise, it’d be cheaper just to subscribe to Apple TV+ for this series.

For All Mankind season 1 Blu-ray is now on sale.