CAPED CRUSADER

The Handmaid’s Tale is back – and darker than ever, with Elisabeth Moss’s character June bent on rebellion, and her friends stranded in a toxic wasteland

The Handmaid’s Tale, the hit drama where women are forced into slavery after a military coup by religious zealots, won a string of awards when it came out last year and left viewers thrilled and horrified.

Now Channel 4 is screening the second series. ‘It’s really dark,’ warns Elisabeth Moss, the former Mad Men actress who plays the main character June, who’s also known as Offred. ‘And it gets worse.’

Based on the 1985 novel by Margaret Atwood, the first series plunged us into a nightmarish future where America is now the Republic of Gilead, run by an extreme Christian movement who seized power amid plummeting fertility rates and environmental pollution.

June, a rare fertile female, has her daughter taken from her and believes her husband Luke has been executed. She is sent to live with high-ranking Commander Fred Waterford (played by Shakespeare In Love’s Joseph Fiennes) as a handmaid, forced to wear a red cape and hood and is given her new name, as she is the property ‘of Fred’. His wife Serena is infertile and every month, in a ritual ceremony, he tries to impregnate June.

Series one ended with her pregnant after an affair with the Commander’s chauffeur Nick and leading a rebellion to prevent another handmaid being killed. We saw her bundled into a van not knowing if she was being taken to the safety of Canada – where she learned her husband and best friend Moira had found sanctuary – or to her death.

But June is in fact still in Gilead and determined to keep fighting. Now she’s pregnant and will have to give her baby to Fred and Serena, she’s more unwilling to accept her nightmarish situation. ‘June has stopped suppressing her emotions. She’s much more brave and outspoken,’ says Elisabeth. ‘She doesn’t think too much now – she says what she thinks and does what she does. She’s super ballsy and that’s been really fun for me to play.’

The only light for June is her romance with Nick, even though she feels guilty now she knows her husband is alive. ‘In Gilead you have to grab love where you can find it, and she’s found it with Nick,’ Elisabeth adds.

Series two, written in collaboration with Margaret Atwood, takes the story and scope of the bestselling book further – showing us for the first time ‘the colonies’, areas patrolled by armed men in gas masks on horseback where women are sent to clear toxic waste. Handmaid Emily is there, for stealing a car and run-

ning over a soldier, as is Janine – an unstable handmaid who tried to kill herself after her baby was taken away.

‘The book speaks of the colonies as this looming dark place but doesn’t go there,’ says writer and producer Bruce Miller. ‘The way we’ve created it, at first it’s beautiful. But the closer you get the more horrific it is. The horses have gas masks but the women don’t.’

Written 30 years ago, about a bleak future, the story is also seen as a contemporary tale about women’s rights.

‘The writers are making a show that’s true to Margaret Atwood’s work rather than political issues,’ insists Yvonne Strahovski, who plays Serena. ‘But it resonates with people and is sparking a lot of conversations.’ The Handmaid’s Tale, tomorrow, 9pm, Channel 4.