Half science-fiction and half something closer to a documentary, Mars imagines humanity's first colony on the red planet as a project that could actually be attempted.
What is Mars about?
Mars follows the crew of the first crewed mission from Earth aiming to establish a lasting human presence on the planet, mixing scripted drama with a docu-style framing that treats the mission as though it were unfolding in the near future rather than pure fantasy. The series splits its time between the astronauts' journey and arrival, and interview-style material that grounds the fictional mission in the real engineering, medical, and psychological problems a Mars colony would actually face. Rather than treating the trip as background for space-opera adventure, the show leans into the isolation, the mechanical failures, the politics of who controls a colony this far from home, and the sheer physical toll of living somewhere the human body was never built for. That tension between hard-edged realism and genuine drama is the show's throughline: every step forward for the colony comes with a cost, and the series doesn't shy away from showing what those costs look like for the people paying them.
About the cast
Jihae leads the ensemble as one of the mission's key crew members, with Alberto Ammann, Clémentine Poidatz, Anamaria Marinca, Sammi Rotibi, Nicholas Wittman, Cosima Shaw, and Ben Cotton rounding out a cast playing astronauts, mission control staff, and other figures tied to the colonization effort across the series' international, multilingual crew.
Context & significance
Mars premiered in 2016, directed by Everardo Gout, and blends adventure, drama, and science-fiction in a format built around roughly hour-long episodes. Produced in the United States, the series stood out at the time for pairing its fictional mission with documentary-style segments discussing the real science behind Mars colonization, an approach relatively uncommon for a scripted sci-fi drama of its era.
Watching Mars on Ktime
Mars is available on K-Time with Persian dubbing and Persian subtitles, letting Farsi-speaking audiences follow the mission in their own language. There's no cost to browse this page, and watching the series only requires logging into a free K-Time account, part of a Farsi-first streaming experience built for Persian-speaking viewers wherever they are.