?It has to feel real, like it could happen to you.? Warning: Spoilers abound! If you are unfamiliar with the plot and don?t want the surprise ruined, bookmark this story for later.
It seems oddly fitting that the production designer for The Handmaid?s Tale television series has a background working on horror films. Julie Berghoff was tasked with bringing the repressive, theocratic society of Gilead, which has replaced much of the United States, to life. Adapting Margaret Atwood?s classic dystopian novel, and depicting the suffocating experience of the protagonist, would be a difficult job at any time. In today?s charged political environment, that task became even more of a challenge.
According to Berghoff, her approach was to turn the setting into a storytelling device, even a character in some cases; to ?take architecture and make it tell a story within itself.? The 10-episode series, which debuts this Wednesday, takes place in and around a fictional post-revolution Boston. In the midst of a worldwide fertility crisis, a violent overthrow of the U.S. government by extremists has brought a male-dominated caste system to power. The series focuses on Offred (Elisabeth Moss), a slave called a handmaid, who is kept by Commander Waterford (Joseph Fiennes) and his barren wife, Serena Joy (Yvonne Strahovski), and forced to bear children for the elite. Vox?s Todd VanDerWerff calls the show a ?extraordinary adaptation of an enduring classic.?
Using Toronto as a stand-in fo...