The show is kind of a mess, veering between empathetic depictions of its hero’s struggles against the social norms of her time and slapstick humor that recalls Comedy Central’s costume-drama parody Another Period. Emily escapes her home, one night, to snuggle with the personification of Death-played by an extremely high-looking Wiz Khalifa-in a carriage pulled by ghost horses. The Dickinson kids throw an opium-fueled rager, grinding to rap in floor-length gowns. Episodes inspired by poems juxtapose 19th-century visuals with contemporary-ish language, pop music and such YA archetypes as mean girls (and an inexplicable gay Japanese teen whose depiction made me cringe).
Obstacles to her liberation include a mother who’s obsessed with housework (Jane Krakowski in “zany Jenna Maroney project” mode), a fond but sexist dad (Toby Huss) and a brother (Adrian Enscoe) who insists on marrying Emily’s best friend and secret lover (Ella Hunt). There are straight-faced alternate histories, and then there’s this bonkers show, which poses the question: What if Emily Dickinson, but too much? In an unexpectedly excellent casting choice, Hailee Steinfeld plays the poet as a mercurial, mischievous, proto-goth teen (think Aubrey Plaza with a sugar high) who’s desperate to escape the domestic sphere. If you’re intrigued by that premise-and neither exhausted by ‘60s period pieces where brilliant, flawed men brood as brilliant, perfect women endure retro sexism, nor put off by frequent scenes of mission control guys frantically mashing buttons- For All Mankind is going to be your show. Meanwhile, in a subplot that’s sweet and timely but feels tacked on, a Mexican girl crosses the border with outer space on her mind.
Moore (the cult TV maker behind Battlestar Galactica and Outlander) imagines a demoralized NASA, where The Killing star Joel Kinnaman’s disgruntled astronaut Edward Baldwin sabotages his own career with a drunken rant to a reporter about the cowardice of the organization’s leaders. As a prolonged space race unfolds, creator Ronald D. “Red Moon.” That’s the newspaper headline on Jin the America of this solidly constructed alternate-history drama, which games out how the 20th century might’ve gone if the Soviets had beaten the United States to the moon.