The Handmaid’s Tale
RTE Player, until February 13, season 1 Beyond doubt the darkest and most compelling drama to appear on our screens for a long time. This adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s seminal dystopic novel was remarkable both for the quality of the drama, and for the fact that a story written in 1985 as ‘fiction’, has so quickly taken on the appearance of prescient fact.
Against a backdrop of violently declining birthrates, environmental wipe out and civil war, America has become a totalitarian Christian regime, where women can no longer work, vote, own property or be autonomous in any way. Instead they are divided along Biblical lines, with no value except what they can offer men: either as wives, Jezebels, or mothers (‘handmaids’).
Elizabeth Moss (pictured left) stars as June Osborne, a young mother captured trying to escape to Canada, and forced to become handmaid to Commander Fred Waterford, played by Ralph Fiennes. Her job is to bear children for him and his wife, Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski), but the relationship between the three quickly becomes deeply complicated. Desperate to find her husband and daughter, June involves herself in an underground resistance movement, despite the vicious repercussions if she is caught.
Stylish, beautifully-acted and directed, this is a chance to watch all over again from the beginning, or indeed for the first time, before Series 2 comes to Channel4. Kiri Channel4.com, until March 2, episodes 1-4 Social worker Miriam (Sarah Lancashire) is overseeing the inter-racial adoption of one of her charges, nine-year-old Kiri, by the white middle-class family who have been fostering her. Just as the adoption is set to go through, Miriam allows Kiri an unsupervised visit with her grandparents, during which she is abducted by her birth father, and soon turns up dead.
It is a harrowing start, but this isn’t a murder mystery or whodunnit, instead it is a complicated exploration of the impact of Kiri’s death on all those involved, and the very imperfect system in which they operate.