Season 1 Reviews

The Handmaid's Tale season 1 is reviewed by the What The Flick panel. Alonso Duralde (The Wrap, Linoleum Knife), Meredith Placko (+10 Pop Culture) and Grace Baldridge (Pop Trigger) discuss. Tell us what you think in the comments below!

The Handmaid's Tale, the classic novel by Margaret Atwood, is a stunning piece of fiction. It's a dystopian novel set in the near future when women have lost all rights and freedom and are essentially now considered property and only valuable for their ability to reproduce.  It's bleak, innovative, and controversial. Sounds perfect for Know Theatre, right?…

Parents need to know that The Handmaid's Tale (based on Margaret Atwood's novel) is the story of a potential future in which oppressed women are forced to be child-bearing "handmaids" for infertile high-ranking leaders and their wives. Expect many violent, sexual images that could be very disturbing: A screaming child is ripped out of her mother's arms by rifle-wielding soldiers, a rebellious woman is struck with a cattle prod and then dragged away to have one of her eyes removed (offscreen, but we see her bloody bandages later), people hanged for "misdeeds" (including being gay) are shown at length, women punch and kick a so-called criminal until he's dead, and more. Women are punished in a variety of awful ways, but perhaps most upsetting is the "ceremony," in which handmaids have sex with their "masters" while they lie on top of the wives. This institutionalized rape isn't glamorized, and it's upsetting to watch. Strong language includes "f--k," "s--t," "ass," and more. One character is briefly shown smoking a joint and offering it to another, and characters at a party drink beer out of red plastic cups. This is completely distressing material, but parents may still want to watch with mature teens to answer their questions and discuss any similarities Gilead has to our own reality.

Adapted from the classic novel by Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid's Tale is the story of life in the dystopia of Gilead, a totalitarian society in what was formerly the United States. Facing environmental disasters and a plunging birthrate, Gilead is ruled by a twisted fundamentalism in its militarized "return to traditional values." As one of the few remaining fertile women, Offred (Elisabeth Moss) is a Handmaid in the Commander's household, one of the caste of women forced into sexual servitude as a last desperate attempt to repopulate the world. In this terrifying society, Offred must navigate between Commanders, their cruel Wives, domestic Marthas, and her fellow Handmaids--where anyone could be a spy for Gilead--all with one goal: to survive and find the daughter that was taken from her.

This new Hulu show is based on the 1985 Margaret Atwood dystopian novel that feels scarily current.

Season one of the Hulu series was effectively tense, and occasionally a little too much.

In the peakiest of Peak TV years, The Handmaid’s Tale is a standout series worthy of its hype.

The adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel is an upsetting, immersive, and horrifyingly beautiful vision of a too-close dystopian world

A few weeks ago, I mentioned to a friend that I was in the middle of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale. "It’s like 1984 for feminists, right?" he asked. Sort of, I said. But it’s a lot scarier. It’s about how you’ll lose every

Hulu’s adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel lays bare the horrors of collusion with the patriarchy.

The Handmaid's Tale is a troubling story, one that casts Christians in Satan's role and freely shows us the sins in which he revels.

The Hulu show has created a world that’s visually and psychologically unlike anything in film or television.

What worked in The Handmaid's Tale's early episodes now seems relegated to the margins of the story.

Margaret Atwood’s dystopian novel gets the chilling and brilliant TV adaptation it deserves, including a standout performace from Elisabeth Moss

Over 10 extraordinary episodes – and set against traumatic real-world events – this adaptation has resonated as loudly as Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel