Valka, is Handmaid's tale any good? I haven't watched any of it, but I haven't read the book either.
@warpus, I think it's one of the best TV series I've ever seen.
A lot of people are watching it without having read the book, which could either be a good thing or a bad thing depending on whether or not you have a problem with a story that has frequent flashbacks. I've read the book numerous times, seen the 1990 movie numerous times, and now I've seen the TV series once (some episodes twice). Some of the dialogue in the TV series has been lifted directly from the movie.
The basic premise: Something has gone wrong and the world's birthrate has plummeted to the point where it's very difficult for women to get pregnant - whether they're infertile or their husbands/boyfriends are sterile. A Christian fundamentalist group in the U.S. called The Sons of Jacob decides to do something about everything they think is wrong with their country, so they murder the president, members of Congress, and anyone else they have to (there's a civil war) and take over. The new name of their country (the lower 48 states) is The Republic of Gilead. The United States is reduced to only Alaska and Hawaii (see, Canada's good for something - if only a barrier to keep the usurpers from taking Alaska as well) and is basically powerless.
The Sons of Jacob decide to solve the infertility problem by capturing all the fertile women they can, send them to training/indoctrination centers where they're taught to reject their old lives and accept their new roles as Handmaids to the elite of the Republic - the Commanders and their Wives. The idea is that each Handmaid will be assigned to a Commander and his Wife, live with them for two years, and go through a monthly ritual on her fertile days in which he will attempt to impregnate her. The ceremony is based on the Old Testament stories of Sarah/Hagar/Abraham and Rachel/Leah/Jacob/their maids Bilhah and Zilpah, in which the husbands impregnate the maids and the children are claimed by the wives as their own offspring.
If a Handmaid becomes pregnant and delivers a healthy baby, she's given extra privileges and honors (such as are given to government-owned breeding slaves), and the assurance that she'll never be declared "UnWoman" and sent to the "colonies" - toxic waste dumps where the people tasked with cleaning those don't live more than a few months, usually. Of course the Handmaid doesn't get to keep her baby - she's expected to give it up to the Wife, and then she's assigned to a new household.
If, at the end of the two-year assignment, the Handmaid doesn't become pregnant, she's the one who is blamed. It's actually illegal to even hint that the Commander may be sterile. After three households and no baby, the Handmaid is declared barren, UnWoman, and sent to the colonies.
The older women, if they're able to work or are especially pro-Gilead, might be employed as Marthas (cooks/cleaning staff/other domestic servants) or Aunts (the women who train and brainwash the Handmaids). The novel mentions Econowives - the wives of low-ranking men, but neither the movie nor the TV series mentions them.
The main character's name is Offred - obviously not her real name - that's been taken from her. Each Handmaid is "Of(her Commander's first name)". So Offred is "Of Fred" - the Handmaid assigned to Fred Waterford and his Wife. We never learn her name in the novel, although the movie gives her the name "Kate" and the TV series gives her the name "June."
Offred/June was married to Luke, and they have a daughter (Jill in the movie and Hannah in the TV series). When the series opens, June, Luke, and Hannah are racing to the Canadian border, trying to escape Gilead. Of course they don't make it. Luke is shot, Hannah is snatched by the Angels (the soldiers of the Republic of Gilead), and June is taken to the Red Centre to become a Handmaid. She discovers that her best friend, Moira, has also been captured.
There's a significant difference between the novel and the TV series: the novel refers to the Children of Ham, meaning that the elite of Gilead decide that they don't want anyone but white people in their republic. So they expel/deport anyone who isn't white. The TV series opted not to do that, for obvious reasons - they didn't want to be accused of racism - and the in-story reason was that a fertile woman is a fertile woman, no matter her skin color or ethnicity, and a useful worker is a useful worker - so the TV version of Rita (the Waterfords' Martha) is Hispanic.
I'll be honest - this series isn't for everyone. There are some pretty violent scenes, a couple of which I found stomach-turning and there's one scene in the last episode that I was actually glad I read a spoiler about - I'd rather not see bloody amputations, thankyouverymuch.
The Ceremony is basically ritualized rape, involving the Commander, the Handmaid, and the Wife (gotta maintain the fiction that the baby is really the Wife's child). Some people find these scenes really disturbing. There are other multiple instances of violence, both graphic and off-screen, all accompanied by pious bible readings to justify them.
The original run of the show is over, but Bravo is rerunning the series on Thursday nights (sorry for not posting this in time for tonight's episode, but it's available on their website:
http://www.bravo.ca/shows/TheHandmaidsTale
It's on Bravo (not sure when in your time zone; it's on at 8 pm here). If you do end up watching it, you'll probably notice a few familiar places in the background, as the series is filmed in Toronto. Margaret Atwood has a cameo in the first episode as one of the Aunts.
The show has been renewed for a second season. Nearly everything in the book has been done, but the book has an ambiguous ending. So the producers and writers are free to take the series in almost any direction in the second season.
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