Handmaid’s Tale: Mother and daughter with plenty of baggage

Pick of the day: The Handmaid’s Tale, 8.35pm, SBS.

Ann Dowd and Elisabeth Moss in The Handmaid's Tale.

Pick of the day: The Handmaid’s Tale, 8.35pm, SBS.

Canadian Kari Skogland, who directed the next two episodes of The Handmaid’s Tale, is responsible for one of the goriest scenes shown on television.

I refer to a 2014 episode of Vikings, Blood Eagle, where a man’s lungs were ritually removed via his back.

“That was a crazy time,” Skogland told me recently. “I am Norwegian by heritage, and I kept telling showrunner Michael Hirst that I was the only real Viking on the show.”

So it’s fitting that after steering Handmaid’s season one finale, she has returned to direct more episodes of the show about women in an intolerable dystopia subjected to cruel and unusual treatment at every turn.

“Lizzie (Elisabeth Moss, who plays June/Offred) is so watchable and engaging, which is a huge part of why we go with her on this adventure, and why we are interested in this tremendously relatable rebel with a cause,” Skogland says.

“Gilead is a fictional dystopian world but not so far from our own world now, such is the brilliance of Margaret Atwood. It is like watching a looming train wreck because of the ‘what if?’ of it.

“There is no clear evil agenda; people do evil things but they aren’t evil in and of themselves — or are they? In the series, we are constantly walking that line.”

In tonight’s episode, titled Baggage, June is on the move from safe house to safe house, in something akin to a spy thriller.

It also examines the relationships between mothers and daughters, and all the inevitable failures that entails.

“The show embraces that everyone has failings and triumphs — and of course hoping that someone won’t fail you,” Skogland says.

“We shot episodes three and four continuously, and the wonderful thing that runs through this is the topic of identity, and what happens to June as she grapples with who she has to be in this world.”

Episode four next week, Skogland says cryptically, “packs a punch”.