The Astronaut Wives Club, A Must-See Show

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With Mad Men coming to an end this year I wasn’t sure where I’d get my mid-century TV fix. Call the Midwife is a great show that takes place in the 50’s and 60’s but season 4 ended in May for the US. Then came The Astronaut Wives Club.

To be honest, my hopes weren’t that high. Mad Men was so well done, down to every last detail, The Astronaut Wives Club had big shoes to fill. It hasn’t quite hit Mad Men level, that’s not surprising, but it has been very entraining and true to the mid-century aesthetic.

Eric Daman has does an amazing job with the fashion on the show. I could watch the show on mute and still enjoy it. I got the chance to talk to Daman briefly on Twitter when he joined in for a bit of #VintageChat. I asked what he thought about working on the show and he said “it was a dream job.” You can read more about his work on this show on Fashionista.

Even the food seen on the show is perfect. Emily Marshall, the food stylist for the show, cooked all the dishes. She was already a fan of vintage cooking and had been collecting cookbooks and old magazines for years.

“In my 20s, I started collecting old magazines and really poring over the food ads and becoming strangely obsessed with them. Gradually, I started buying cookbooks at garage sales. I knew when I took this job that all this knowledge I’d been building for some mysterious reason was going to come to use.”- Behind the Insane, Vintage Food of ABC’s The Astronaut Wives Club- Bon Appetite 

While the mid-century style in the show is amazing, the real reason this show is a much-see is the real women the show is about. These women were amazing and until now have not been given enough focus and credit.

Rene Carpenter, astronaut Scott Carpenter’s wife, is one of the amazing wives featured on the show. She was a journalist and hosted her own show on Channel 9 called “Everywoman.” The show was said to have been “crafted with a bit of feminist bent.”

While The Astronaut Wives Club is very entertaining, it is of course still a TV show and Rene is not a big fan of the show, saying, “every segment of the show is fiction!”

However, if you take the show with a grain of salt, it is very good and I highly recommend checking it out. The show is based on the book The Astronaut Wives Club, which is next on my list of books to read! I also plan to read more about the women behind this show and their true history. 

If you have seen the show I’d love to know what you have thought of it so far. Also if you have read the book, what did you think?

If you have missed the first episodes you can find them on Hulu or Amazon.