For All Mankind is a sci-fi Apple TV series that asks one simple question: What if the Soviet Union landed on the moon first in 1969? What resulted is an alternate history sci-fi series where the entire world changed, and the race to the stars actually increased in the following years. The series has run for five seasons, and there will be a final sixth season premiering in 2027, bringing this sprawling decades-long story to a close. However, for anyone who loves alternate history stories likeย For All Mankindย and wants to see more like it, there are a lot of television shows that deliver alternative history stories, both those involving a changed world and some with alternate realities that show a very different world.
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From shows that change the world in dramatic ways to alternate Earths that show how different things could have been, here are seven great alternate history sci-fi shows for fans of For All Mankind.
7) Timeless
Timeless by Eric Kripke (Supernatural) and Shawn Ryan (The Shield) is a time-travel series that aired on NBC from 2016 to 2018. It follows the “Time Team” of historian Lucy Preston (Abigail Spencer), soldier Wyatt Logan (Matt Lanter), and engineer Rufus Carlin (Malcolm Barrett). The main plot sees them chasing a thief throughout history, as the villain tries to alter past events.
This series offers an alternate history angle that follows a centuries-old secret society called Rittenhouse, which tries to rewrite history to control the present, so every trip risks changing the timeline the team returns to. The best thing about this alternate history sci-fi show is that NBC ordered a two-part finale after canceling it after two seasons, so the show could finish its story. Timeless Season 2 has a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score.
6) Dark Matter
For fans of For All Mankind, there is another alternate history sci-fi series on Apple TV to watch called Dark Matter. This should not be confused with a show by the same name from the SYFY channel (2015-2017). Instead, this 2024 series is based on the novel by Blake Crouch and stars Joel Edgerton as physicist Jason Dessen and Jennifer Connelly as his wife Daniela.
The story opens with someone attacking Jason, and when he wakes up, he is on an Earth with an alternate history, one where he is a very different person who chose career over family. The problem is that his alternate Earth counterpart is the one who attacked him, and he has now taken over Jason’s life on his Earth and taken his spot in his family. The best thing is that, as Jason tries to find his way back home, he visits countless Earths, all with alternate histories, some of which have destroyed all society on those planets.
5) The Man in the High Castle
Whenย The Man in the High Castleย began airing on Prime Video, it looked like a basic alternate history series that asked what the world would look like if Germany and Japan had won World War II. However, it became more of a sci-fi-leaning series when people found mysterious films that showed what the world would have looked like if the Allies actually won, which would be the real world.
Based on Philip K. Dick’s 1962 Hugo Award-winning novel, it stars Alexa Davalos, Rufus Sewell, and Joel de la Fuente, and the series really goes deep into the reality switching that threatens to tear that world apart. Seeing a world run by fascists and dictators was shocking, but when the sci-fi elements began to leak in, things really began to pick up. It finished as planned, telling the full story from beginning to end.
4) Counterpart
Counterpartย is an underrated sci-fi thriller that aired on Starz and stars J.K. Simmons as two different characters. Created by Justin Marks (Shลgun), Counterpart stars Simmons as Howard Silk, a low-level employee at Berlinโs UN Office of Interchange. He then discovers his agency guards a crossing to a parallel Earth and meets his more dangerous counterpart.
The two identical Earths split in 1987 when a German experiment caused a divergence in their histories. This is not so much a sci-fi story about an alternative real-world Earth, but one that shows two parallel universes where espionage events altered how those worlds, and the people in them, turned out. Both seasons ofย Counterpartย hold a 100% Rotten Tomatoes score, and it won a Creative Arts Emmy.
3) 11.22.63
Based on the novel by Stephen King and produced by J.J. Abrams, 11.22.63 is an eight-episode limited series that played out on Hulu in 2016. In this series, James Franco plays a Maine teacher named Jake Epping, who learns about a door that leads to the same day and time in history, and he receives the request to use this portal to stop the assassination of President John F. Kennedy.
This is a time travel story, with Epping taking over a task that the owner of a local diner had been attempting for years. He is asked to live in the past and put himself in a position to stop Lee Harvey Oswald from changing history. However, as with any story that involves trying to change history, this shows that averting a disaster might not always create a world that is better than the one people currently live in.
2) Watchmen
Watchmen is a 2019 HBO limited series that is a sequel to the Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons graphic novel of the same name. While Zack Snyder adapted a movie from the graphic novel, this series uses the events in the comics as its canon rather than the movie and then shows what happened 30 years later. While Ozymandias’s actions were to stop a world war that would destroy everything, nothing really changed in the world when all was said and done.
What makes this so interesting is that the graphic novel Watchmen was also an alternate history tale, with the world changed after the Vietnam War, thanks to Doctor Manhattan. In the TV show, it takes place in Tulsa, Oklahoma, and goes into detail about the importance of remembering the 1921 Tulsa Race Massacre, and details how racism and prejudice in the world have just gotten worse. Watchmen won 11 Emmys, including Outstanding Limited Series, out of 26 nominations.
1) Fringe
Fringe was the big sci-fi series on Fox that was supposed to be the X-Files replacement. What happened was that it took a very different look from the X-Files. While the previous show was a highly entertaining sci-fi action series that dealt with conspiracy theories and monsters, Fringe was a highly intelligent sci-fi story that dealt with fringe science, and it never once dumbed itself down concerning the scientific aspects of its storytelling.
The story follows a Boston-based FBI โFringe Divisionโ that investigates bizarre โfringe scienceโ cases and uncovers a parallel universe. This alternate timeline is shown through the two alternate Earths. In the alternate timeline, the Twin Towers still stand (9/11 played out differently), JFK survived, the $20 bill features Martin Luther King Jr., zeppelins are common transport, and the Soviet Union still exists. The series got its planned ending and remains one of the smartest sci-fi shows in television history.
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