Apple TV’s Longest-Running Sci-Fi Show Races Toward Global Streaming Dominance

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The Apple TV+ sci-fi series, For All Mankind, is quickly becoming one of the most popular shows on streaming platforms following the premiere of its fifth season.

Apple TV+ has quickly become a go-to for science fiction fans, with shows like Severance, Silo, Pluribus, Dark Matter, and Foundation. However, For All Mankind is its longest-running series. This show, which started in 2019, presents a fascinating ‘what if’ scenario: what if the Soviet Union had won the space race and landed on the moon before the United States? The series explores how that rivalry would have continued for decades. Each season jumps forward in time – the first covers the late 1960s and early 70s, and the current fifth season is set in the 2010s.

The Apple TV+ series For All Mankind is currently the second most popular show on the platform worldwide, trailing only Monarch: Legacy of Monsters. It’s performing better than several other popular titles, including Shrinking, Imperfect Women, The Last Thing He Told Me, Hijack, Tehran, Ted Lasso, Severance, and The Morning Show. The show appears in the top 10 in over 100 countries, such as Australia, Brazil, Canada, France, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, and South Korea. In the United States, For All Mankind currently ranks fourth.

The show’s recent streaming success happened quickly after the premiere of season 5’s first episode, “First Light,” and just five days after the announcement that season 6 will be the show’s last. Creators Ben Nedivi and Matt Wolpert shared that they always intended to end the story at this point. Season 6 will bring the timeline into the 2020s, allowing them to conclude the narrative as planned and showcase a world dramatically altered by a continuing space race.

As a huge sci-fi fan, I’ve been following For All Mankind on Apple TV, and it consistently delivers! Critics and audiences both seem to love it – it’s holding steady with a 92% critics’ score and an 82% audience score on Rotten Tomatoes after seven seasons. The reviews for season 5 are still coming in, but so far, it’s looking fantastic, currently at 93% based on 15 reviews. Ben Gibbons at ScreenRant even called it “another wonderful entry in what is repeatedly setting itself up to be one of the best sci-fi shows in recent history” and gave it an 8 out of 10 – which pretty much says it all!

Apple TV+’s For All Mankind isn’t just popular with viewers and critics – it’s become a major franchise. A new spinoff, Star City, will expand the universe, shifting the focus from the American space race to the Soviet perspective. Both the first episode of Star City and the season finale of For All Mankind will premiere on May 29th.

Though For All Mankind will conclude after its sixth season, it’s likely to remain Apple TV+’s longest-running science fiction series for some time. Other sci-fi shows haven’t reached that level yet: Silo is ending with season four, and Pluribus and Dark Matter are only just beginning with their second seasons. While a third season of Severance is planned, the show—starring Adam Scott—is known for its lengthy gaps between seasons.

The first episode of ‘For All Mankind’ is now available on Apple TV+, and new episodes will be released every Friday.

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2026-03-30 05:40