The Handmaid’s Tale (Channel 4, Sundays, 9pm) isn’t an easy fit for the small screen. It’s the story of Offred, a woman living in an American dystopia called Gilead. Here, infertile nutcases harvest fertile women for surrogate breeding, under the guise of religious fundamentalism.
Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel is told entirely from Offred’s point of view, which means we see Gilead from just one, limited perspective. Put Gilead on telly, however, and as the camera pans out we spot the flaws in Atwood’s creation. Who does all the work? How does Gilead feed itself? How, in the middle of a war, does everything stay so weirdly clean?
