The Handmaid's Tale (TV series)

The Handmaid's Tale is an American dystopian drama web television series created by Bruce Miller, based on the 1985 novel of the same name by Margaret Atwood. It was ordered by the streaming service Hulu as a straight-to-series order of 10 episodes, for which production began in late 2016. The plot features a dystopian future following a Second American Civil War wherein a totalitarian society subjects fertile women, called "Handmaids", into child-bearing servitude.

The first three episodes of the series premiered on April 26, 2017; the subsequent seven episodes aired on a weekly basis every Wednesday. In May 2017, the series was renewed for a second season which premiered on April 25, 2018.

The Handmaid's Tale has received widespread critical acclaim and its first season won eight Primetime Emmy Awards from thirteen nominations, including Outstanding Drama Series, becoming the first series on a streaming service to win an Emmy for Outstanding Series. It also won Golden Globe Awards for Best Television Series – Drama and Best Actress for Elisabeth Moss.

In May 2018, Hulu announced that the series had been renewed for a third season.

Plot
In the near future, fertility rates collapse as a result of sexually transmitted diseases and environmental pollution. With this chaos, the totalitarian, theonomic government of "Gilead" establishes rule in the former United States in the aftermath of a civil war. Society is organized by power-hungry leaders along with a new, militarized, hierarchical regime of fanaticism and newly created social classes, in which women are brutally subjugated, and by law are not allowed to work, own property, handle money, or read.

Worldwide infertility has resulted in the conscription of the few remaining fertile women in Gilead, called "Handmaids", according to an extremist interpretation of the Biblical account of Bilhah. They are assigned to the homes of the ruling elite, where they must submit to ritualized rape by their male masters in order to become pregnant and bear children for those men and their wives.

Alongside the Handmaids, much of society is now grouped into classes that dictate their freedoms and duties. Women are divided into a small range of social categories, each one signified by a plain dress in a specific color: Handmaids wear red, Marthas (who are housekeepers and cooks, named after the biblical figure) wear green, and Wives (who are expected to run their households) wear blue and turquoise.

Econowives, the lower-class women who still have minimal agency, are a sort of mixture of all these categories, and they wear gray (a departure from the book in which Econowives wear clothing striped with the aforementioned colors). Women prisoners are called Unwomen and are worked to death clearing toxic waste in the Colonies.

Another class of women, Aunts (who train and oversee the Handmaids), wear brown. Additionally, the Eyes are a secret police watching over the general populace for signs of rebellion, Hunters track down people attempting to flee the country, and Jezebels are prostitutes in secret brothels catering to the elite ruling class.

June Osborne, renamed Offred (Elisabeth Moss), is the Handmaid assigned to the home of the Gileadan Commander Fred Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) and his wife Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski). Offred is subject to strict rules and constant scrutiny; an improper word or deed on her part can lead to brutal punishment.

Offred, who is named after her male master ("Of Fred") like all Handmaids, was married and had a daughter, a job, a bank account, and her own name and identity in the "time before", but all she can safely do now is follow the rules of Gilead in hopes that she can someday live free again and be reunited with her daughter. The Waterfords, key players in the rise of Gilead, have their own conflicts with the realities of the society they have helped create.