Tv's Great New Heroine Is Born in the Handmaid's Tale

IT HARDLY SEEMS COINCIDENTAL THAT MARGARET ATWOOD’S 1985 novel The Handmaid’s Tale is one of two classics to garner renewed interest after President Trump’s election. (The other, George Orwell’s 1984, is being adapted for Broadway this summer.) Handmaid’s themes—the cruelty and illiberal thinking of theocracy, the ease by which democracies slip into authoritarianism—are suddenly so relevant to so many that it would be easy to conclude that the new series, now playing on Hulu, is the beneficiary of extraordinarily good timing.

- Daniel D'Addario

But that would be giving Hulu’s Handmaid’s too little credit. The ideas drawn out in this masterful adaptation did not suddenly become relevant after one election. And the show is as elegantly made as anything on television this year. It manages to bring a dystopian story to life in a way that works as episodic TV, sapping none of the book’s power. This is a series that could work anytime and one that will likely be watched for years to come.