A World Apart

 

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If you’re looking for a new TV addiction over the summer months, then Channel 4’s The Handmaid’s Tale could be just what the doctor ordered.

When the powerful new drama began in the US in April, it received wide acclaim, with The New York Times calling it ‘unflinching, vital and scary as hell’.

Based on Margaret Atwood’s best-selling 1985 dystopian novel, the 10-part series is set in a near-future America where a Christian fundamentalist sect has turned the country into a totalitarian state called Gilead.

An environmental crisis has left only a handful of fertile females to carry on the human race. Now held captive by the ruling class, and wearing a uniform of crimson robes and bonnets, the women are forced to become reproductive surrogates for their male Commanders and their infertile wives.

The series focuses on Offred, played by Mad Men and Top of the Lake’s Elisabeth Moss, who is assigned to Commander Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) and his wife, former televangelist Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski).