Launch Sequence

With Ron Moore’s space-race drama For All Mankind, Apple is betting on marquee names and lush production to get its TV+ service off the ground. Can it achieve orbit?

- Peter Rubin

MORE THAN 50 BUILDINGS AND SOUNDSTAGES SPRAWL ACROSS THE 18 HECTARES OF THE SONY PICTURES LOT. That's a lot of windowless oblongs, and even more distance between them. If you need to get from, say, the Jimmy Stewart Building to Stage 15, golf carts and Sprinter vans are the customary mode – even on sunny days. On a particular Saturday in February, while an atmospheric river settled over Los Angeles, those vehicles were a necessity. The downpour was bad luck for the dozens of journalists there that day, but it was also a touch allegorical. After what felt like years of anticipation, Apple was about to take us behind the scenes of a show it was making for its still mysterious, still unnamed subscription streaming service. We were going to find out if Apple, maker of so many devices that have redefined the way we consume content, could finally make content – good content – of its own.

AFTER THE JOURNALISTS HANDED THEIR PHONES TO APPLE STAFFERS to be taped up with camera-blocking stickers, the vans shuttled the group to Stage 15. Dryness maintained, we walked into the control room of NASA’s Manned Spacecraft Centre circa 1969.

Mission Control, as it’s more commonly known, was painstakingly refurbished by NASA in its original Houston location and reopened to the public earlier this year. The Hollywood version in front of us, taking up almost 750 square metres of Stage 15, is its utter replica, from the soft packs of Kools strewn on long tiers of desks to the million-buttoned BOOSTER consoles that tracked the Saturn V rockets powering the Apollo spacecraft into orbit. Rotary phones. Horn-rimmed glasses. Even the ceiling tiles have been custom-made to match the ones in Houston.