MINISERIES PREMIERE: This new Hulu series, based on the Eighties novel by Margaret Atwood, stars Elisabeth Moss as a woman swept up into a horrifying new world in which men rule completely, and women are relegated to one of several subservient roles: trophy wife, actual servant, guard or overseer, or fertile handmaidens, assigned to procreate with specific men to provide children for their barren wives. What’s most scary about this imagined dystopian and sexist world is that, in this new TV adaptation, it appears to take place almost immediately following our present reality – and the shift is as brutal as it is sudden. Alexis Bledel co-stars as, like Moss’s character, another women harboring a quiet but defiant resistance to the new status quo. The first three episodes are available today. For a full review,
listen to my preview today on NPR’s Fresh Air with Terry Gross, or visit the
Fresh Air website. Also,
see David Hinckley's full review for TVWW in All Along the Watchtower.