Adaptation of dystopian society rightly wins widespread acclaim

Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale is rightly held as a classic - as vivid a depiction of a dystopian society as Orwell's Nineteen Eighty-four or Huxley's Brave New World.

- Chris Broom on The Handmaid's Tale

There was a 1990 film adaptation starring Natasha Richardson, Robert Duvall and Faye Dunaway, which can be charitably described as having 'mixed' reviews.

But the TV adaptation, which began in 2017, captured the zeitgeist and was hugely acclaimed.

Now in its sixth and final season, it has gone far beyond its source material. It has been so successful that it inspired Attwood to revisit that world and write a belated sequel - The Testaments. The author was involved in the TV show as an advisor, so its plot has been woven into the wider world she helped create.

The story is set in a near future world where the United States has been overthrown and replaced by Gilead, a brutal authoritarian, patriarchal society run on a skewed Christian ideology.

Fertility rates have dropped drastically and women are subjugated according to the men's needs. They are not allowed to own property, or even read and write.

The 'luckiest' get to be wives of the commanders-the ruling class. But women who are still fertile are often forced into service as handmaids - their sole function to bear children for commanders. Once a month they are forced to submit to the Ceremony, a ritualised rape, in the hope that they'll become pregnant.