The Handmaid’s Tale is unmissable TV

IT HAS first-rate writing, outstanding performances and gorgeous cinematography. It’s also terrifying and completely unmissable.

THIS week, Australians will finally get to watch the buzzy series the rest of the world has been obsessing over.

So now you can understand what your mate in London, Los Angeles or Vancouver has been banging on about.

Yes, it is that good.

The Handmaid’s Tale isn’t just an “important” and prestigious series, it’s also can’t-tear-away TV. But you probably shouldn’t binge the whole season in one sitting, unless you want to end up hating the world.

Based on Margaret Atwood’s seminal 1985 novel, which already had a forgettable film adaptation in 1990, the 10-episode first season will drop in its entirety on SBS On Demand on Thursday and there are no plans yet to broadcast it on linear TV so you better get streaming.

This adaptation is one of the best things you’ll see on screen this year thanks to first-rate writing, outstanding performances and gorgeous cinematography.

Above all, it’s a story that is both compelling and genuinely terrifying.

Elisabeth Moss in another stunning performance.

In a reality not too far from our own, the United States has become the totalitarian government of Gilead, a dystopian society where women have been stripped of all rights and stratified into “needs-based” roles.

The handmaids are a class of fertile women in a society where pregnancies and healthy live births are rare. The handmaids are “posted” to the households of important men in Gilead where they function as unwilling surrogates and endure monthly rape in a bizarre “ceremony” involving the Commander and his wife.

The Bible-thumping Gileadian leaders’ rule is absolute, any form of dissent is outlawed and all undesirables — including homosexuals, intellectuals and non-Christians — are either “sent to the colonies” or executed with their bodies left to hang over the city walls.

Offred (Elisabeth Moss) is a handmaid in Commander Fred Waterford’s house. Before the takeover, her name was June and she was married to a kind man named Luke with whom she had a daughter who was torn from her arms as her family tried to flee across the border to the still-free Canada.

Moss was an MVP from her Mad Men run and has only reinforced her position as a superlative performer with starring turns in Top of the Lake, The One I Love, High-Rise and the Palme d’Or winning The Square. The Handmaid’s Tale is another notch in her considerable belt.

Her ability to convey the full range of emotions on her face without speaking — dialogue is kept to a minimum in Gilead lest you betray yourself with independent thought — is second-to-none. Meanwhile, her wry voice-over reveals her inner monologue and adds some necessary levity to an otherwise heavy text.

In Gilead, women are forbidden to read or write.

The flashbacks to June’s life “from before” are some of the most effective aspects of the series, in part because of how closely it mirrors our own. When women’s bank accounts were frozen, June and Moira (Samira Wiley) were in a cafe trying to pay $3.50 for coffee on her credit card.

These scenes, of how the autocrats seized power, are chilling in its familiarity — of the apathy when civil rights were stripped back in the name of “fighting terrorists”.

Canadian Atwood wrote the book in the mid-1980s during the Reagan era and the dying days of the Soviet Union. There was a lot of chatter around a few months ago when The Handmaid’s Tale debuted overseas about how, in the three decades since, women’s rights have either stagnated or declined.

It’s easy to make a connection between the current political climate and an increase in anti-women rhetoric espoused by some men in the public sphere, hate speech that they may not have been emboldened to express so freely only a few years ago.

And it’s easy to make a connection between the erosion of women’s rights in the US with the rise of Donald Trump — though the misogyny under the guise of paternalistic protection on display in The Handmaid’s Tale is more in keeping with US Vice President Mike Pence’s philosophy on gender relations. The distinct blood red costumes from the show have been used by protesting activists in Washington DC.

Dissenters are killed and hung as an example to others.

But what’s scariest about The Handmaid’s Tale is not how easily Americans or even Australians could find themselves slipping into a Gilead-like regime. It’s that this is already the reality for many women around the world.

Atwood said that when she wrote the book she only included practices that had either had a historical precedent or was still happening — she didn’t imagine this in some kind of feverish dystopian nightmare. It’s the sexual repression that occurred during the US’s puritanical roots or the paranoia present in former Eastern Bloc countries under Soviet rule.

What The Handmaid’s Tale portrays is the kind of thing that is still perpetrated in theocratic Saudi Arabia, a trading and diplomatic partner of Australia and an ally to the US, or in parts of the Middle East controlled by Islamic State and the Taliban.

While that’s all serious and definite takeaways from The Handmaid’s Tale, don’t let the social lessons overshadow what is an excellent piece of television. It’s stunningly crafted with its bright and beautiful aesthetic only underscoring the darkness at play. Every frame is visual art and the attention to detail is laudable.

There is appalling sexual and general violence in The Handmaid’s Tale, done in the name of some god, and the series doesn’t sugar-coat anything.

It is shocking. It is horrifying. And it’s unmissable TV.

All 10 episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale season one will be available to stream on SBS On Demand from Thursday, July 6.

Continue the conversation on Twitter with @wenleima.

Offred and Fred, playing Scrabble, as you do.