Atwood classic superbly reimagined 

Lucy lethbridge 

The Handmaid’s Tale 
Channel 4

Margaret Atwood’s chilling novel of a dystopian future in which those women still fertile are made into “handmaids” or breeding stock for their overlords and their sterile wives, was made into a film in 1990, starring Natasha Richardson as the main protagonist, Offred. Now MGM has adapted it into a six-part series – and the slow burn is just what is needed to recreate the terrifying world of whispers, secrets and fear that underpins the Republic of Gilead, which has emerged from the ruins of the United States after a war sparked by a catastrophic drop in the human birth rate.