The Handmaid's Tale (2017)
The Handmaid's Tale is a 2017 drama series created by Bruce Miller. It stars Elisabeth Moss, Yvonne Strahovski and Ann Dowd.
After a second American civil war, a fundamentalist theocracy called Gilead seizes the United States and strips women of their names, their money, and their rights. With fertility collapsing, the few women who can still bear children are enslaved as Handmaids, assigned to powerful households for a single purpose. Elisabeth Moss plays one such woman, watching, remembering, and surviving under constant surveillance. Adapted by Bruce Miller from Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel for Hulu, the series pairs suffocating dread with flashes of the ordinary life that came before. The result is bleak, tense, and quietly furious.
Quick answers
What is The Handmaid's Tale about?
After a second American civil war, a fundamentalist theocracy called Gilead seizes the United States and strips women of their names, their money, and their rights. With fertility collapsing, the few women who can still bear children are enslaved as Handmaids, assigned to powerful households for a single purpose. Elisabeth Moss plays one such woman, watching, remembering, and surviving under constant surveillance. Adapted by Bruce Miller from Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel for Hulu, the series pairs suffocating dread with flashes of the ordinary life that came before. The result is bleak, tense, and quietly furious.
When was The Handmaid's Tale released?
The Handmaid's Tale was released on 26 April 2017.
How many episodes does The Handmaid's Tale have?
The Handmaid's Tale has 66 episodes across 6 seasons.
Who made The Handmaid's Tale?
The Handmaid's Tale was created by Bruce Miller.
Where can I watch The Handmaid's Tale?
The Handmaid's Tale is available on Hulu, Google Play, Amazon, AppleTV and Fandango at Home.
Where to watch The Handmaid's Tale
Stream: Hulu
Rent: Google Play
Buy: Amazon, AppleTV, Fandango at Home, Google Play
Official site
Cast
- Elisabeth Moss as June Osborne / Offred / Ofjoseph
- Yvonne Strahovski as Serena Joy Waterford
- Ann Dowd as Aunt Lydia Clements
- Max Minghella as Nick Blaine
- Samira Wiley as Moira Strand
- O-T Fagbenle as Luke Bankole
- Madeline Brewer as Janine Lindo
- Amanda Brugel as Rita Blue
- Joseph Fiennes as Fred Waterford
- Bradley Whitford as Joseph Lawrence
- Nina Kiri as Alma
- Ever Carradine as Naomi Putnam
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A few thoughts on The Handmaid's Tale
The nearest page-bound company is The Scorch Trials and Thunderhead, young-adult dystopias about surviving engineered cruelty, while Arthur Miller's The Crucible dramatizes the same theocratic paranoia. BioShock and Half-Life 2 render authoritarian control as places you move through, all propaganda and boot heels, and Muse's Simulation Theory scores the resistance.
Dystopias where the state reaches into every private life
Gilead strips women of names, money and rights in the name of order. These dystopias imagine their own total systems, from thought police and breeding programs to alternate histories where the wrong side won. They share The Handmaid's Tale suffocating sense of a state that reaches into every private corner of a life.
Young heroines fighting a system built to cage them
At the center of The Handmaid's Tale is a woman watching, remembering and quietly resisting a regime built to control her body. These stories follow other heroines pushing back against systems designed to cage them, from walled cities to feuding dynasties. They carry the same charge of defiance held in check by fear.
Survival turned into a rigged and coercive game
The dread in The Handmaid's Tale comes from powerlessness, from rules you cannot refuse. These worlds turn survival itself into a rigged game, where debt, deception and manufactured contests decide who lives free. They share Atwood's cold clarity about coercion dressed up as fairness.
Quiet, near-future dread that builds without a bang
Adapted from Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale pairs its horror with the ordinary life that came before, a slow and creeping unease. These stories work in that same register, letting quiet, off-kilter dread build across small towns and near-future streets. Nothing explodes; something is simply, deeply wrong.