More Shows to Watch if You Love ‘The Handmaid’s Tale’
Like Hulu’s award-winning show, these selections have a dystopian sci-fi edge with strong social messaging, diverse casts, and unique world building.
Hulu is aggressively going after Netflix’s must-binge TV crown. Much of Hulu’s original programming is quite good, but it hadn’t developed a show that broke into the cultural mainstream the way Netflix’s Stranger Things did until the debut of its adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale, which combines a dynamite premise with exceptional production quality and performances. The show won this year’s Golden Globe for best TV drama series and last year’s Outstanding Drama Series Emmy, while Elisabeth Moss., who stars, took home her own Golden Globe and Emmy awards for acting.
Hulu has adopted a more traditional TV model than Netflix uses with The Handmaid’s Tale; new episodes drop every Wednesday. Season two debuted in April, and two more episodes arrive on July 4 and 11. It can be a tough watch, but it’s just as compelling as season one.
If you need something to tide you over until new episodes are released or after the season finale airs, though, other quality TV shows touch on similar issues — dystopian sci-fi with strong social messaging, diverse casting, and unique world building. Because we love you and want you to be happy, here’s a list.
Orphan Black
This is probably the most obvious modern equivalent to The Handmaid’s Tale, and I’d bet the producers of that series took some inspiration from Atwood’s novel. When a young woman discovers she’s one of a group of lab-grown clones, it opens up a tale of deep conspiracies that spans five seasons. Reproductive rights and child bearing are a huge part of Orphan Black’s world building; only two of the clones are fertile, and their struggle for self-determination against forces seeking to control and exploit them is a powerful thing. (Watch it on Amazon Video)
Amerika
One of the most compelling things about The Handmaid’s Tale is the questions it raises: “How could this have happened so fast?” The 1987 miniseries Amerika is a solid if dated take on that question. It takes place in 1997, a decade after a Communist takeover of the United States, where survivors still remember what their country was like before. Dissenters are sent off to work camps, and the narrative follows three men: a local government collaborator, a politician recently released from re-education, and a Soviet administrator. It’s a dark and critical take on American materialism and Communist rigidity, showing how quickly a population can adapt to circumstances beyond their control. (Watch it on YouTube)
3%
Netflix’s take on the dystopia concept hails from the somewhat surprising nation of Brazil. The conceit of 3% is simple: Almost all the world’s population lives in grinding poverty, but when you turn 20, you get a chance to move to the Offshore, where 3% of the population lives in luxury. Getting there isn’t easy, though. The show follows a group of 20-year-olds going through the Process and learning some things they didn’t want to know about the world they live in. One of the most notable features of The Handmaid’s Tale is its diverse casting, and that’s a big draw here, too. Sci-fi from a South American perspective isn’t something we see a lot of, and the show’s voice is unique. (Watch it on Netflix)
Cold Lazarus
I have a huge soft spot for mid-90s BBC sci-fi, but even with that bias, Cold Lazarus is something truly special. Written by playwright Dennis Potter after he was diagnosed with inoperable pancreatic cancer, the four-episode miniseries brings us forward to a Britain ruled by American oligarchs, where just about everything is artificial and synthetic. An underground resistance society springs up to cut our dependence on technology, and the frozen head of a 20th century writer is mined for information but becomes aware during the process. It’s a heady, cutting take on where our society could be headed . (Watch it on YouTube)
Dollhouse
Probably Joss Whedon’s saddest failure, Dollhouse was way ahead of its time. Starring Whedon’s frequent muse Eliza Dushku as Echo, a “doll,” a blank human being who is rented out to clients for a variety of purposes, it took the female empowerment of Buffy and gave it a severe twist. Like in Westworld, the “dolls” have their memories wiped after each assignment, but when Echo starts remembering parts of her past life, it kicks off her quest for identity. Much like The Handmaid’s Tale, this show examined the treatment of women as objects for male pleasure, and it’s a shame that it got only two seasons to find its footing. (Buy or rent on Amazon)
The Leftovers
HBO’s quirky micro-apocalypse drama The Leftovers touches on some of the same elements that The Handmaid’s Tale does, most notably the ability of religion to give people the structure they need to do the unthinkable. When 2 percent of the world’s population vanishes all at once, the survivors go into an existential tailspin as they search for answers that never seem to be forthcoming. In the wake of the disappearance, a cult called the Guilty Remnant rises to remind those left behind that they were somehow unworthy. The show brilliantly toes the line between serious and bizarre, and the third and final season (which just started airing) is promising to be very mind-bending. (Watch it on HBO GO/Now)
Colony
One of the most interesting things about USA’s Colony is how it treats collaborators with the invading alien force that has taken over the planet. Because we never lay eyes on the mysterious Hosts, their doctrines are carried out by ordinary human beings just like you and me, making things even more chilling. We live in a world that’s already proved willing to compromise its morals for survival and comfort, and it’s all too feasible that, given the right circumstances, the government could just choose to let people with chronic illnesses like diabetes die without medical treatment to reduce their impact on society. Humanity is its own worst enemy, and it just takes a little push to strip away our better nature. (Watch it on Netflix)
The 100
The CW’s teen sci-fi show is possibly the best thing on the network for how it wrestles with the thorny morality of survival. When nuclear war wipes out pretty much all of humanity except for stragglers orbiting the Earth in a space station, society up there devolves into a draconian grind for resources. When they grow short, the ruling party makes the decision to send 100 kids to the planet’s surface on a suicide mission to see if the radiation has dissipated enough to survive. The kids live, which kicks off three seasons and counting of political machinations, tough choices, and war crimes. (Watch it on Netflix)
Black Mirror
Charlie Brooker’s brilliant sci-fi anthology is built around the same kind of concepts that motivate The Handmaid’s Tale — how fragile our society is in the face of progress and change. Each episode presents a completely different world, but they’re nearly all worth watching. Special mention must be made of Season Three’s “San Junipero,” which deftly handles the relationship between two young women in a beach town that is not what it seems, but check out PCMag’s ranking of every episode from best to worst. Black Mirror is one of the best and most influential sci-fi shows of the last decade, proving that intelligent, compelling material will find an audience. (Watch it on Netflix)
Read more: “How to See Who’s on Your Wi-Fi”
Originally published at www.pcmag.com.
