The Handmaid’s Tale remade for Trump era: Hulu starts streaming series that’s already earned buzz and blowback
TV adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel about state-mandated rape in a climate-ravaged future America ruled by a tyrannical theocracy has divided commentators ahead of today’s launch
Decades after the release of The Handmaid’s Tale, Margaret Atwood’s dystopian sci-fi fable and foundational feminist text arrives on television – with critics noting its enduring resonance in Donald Trump’s America.
The first three episodes are released by streaming platform Hulu on Wednesday, with excitement piqued among the landmark novel’s fans by a marketing campaign featuring appearances in public across America of the story’s scarlet-clad “handmaids”.
Published in 1985, Atwood’s bestseller is required reading in many schools and often mentioned in the same breath as George Orwell’s 1984, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World and other dystopian works of speculative fiction.
Over the years it has spawned a movie, a graphic novel, an opera and a ballet.
The TV series stars Golden Globe-winner Elisabeth Moss (Mad Men) in a near-future in which New England has been dismantled in a theocratic coup and replaced with Gilead, a tyrannical regime where men mete out brutal punishments and rape is mandated by the state.