The Handmaid's Tale: Night, episode 10, review – this winter's tale is the most potent drama of the year
The imminence of winter has been patented by Game of Thrones. But winter also came to the finale of The Handmaid’s Tale(Channel 4,), in carpets of snow, foggy clouds of breath, and the icy retributions meted out by the theocrats of Gilead. An adulterer was punished with a clinical amputation. His handmaid was sentenced to be stoned to death by her own peers.
After nine episodes of immersion in Margaret Atwood’s gruelling dystopia, the finale yielded green shoots of redemption. “Not too hard, OK?” whimpered the naïve Ofdaniel (Madeline Brewer) at her executioners. The handmaids’ communal defiance was a wonderfully quiet assertion of female empowerment. They even apologised to Aunt Lydia, who has been terrifyingly played by Ann Dowd as an abusive parent.
Atwood’s original title hints at a lost fragment from Chaucer’s pilgrim tales but, more than it could possibly have planned, this riveting adaptation has mapped itself onto the contemporary news cycle: ISIL’s stonings and hangings; Trump’s men in suits signing away abortion rights by executive order. Then, in this finale, Moira (Samira Wiley) made it to the maple-leafed Promised Land where they know how to welcome refugees.
The actors all found shades of nuance in this world of cruel role play. Joseph Fiennes was compelling as the repellent but plausible Commander Waterford, while Yvonne Strahovski changed with the weather as Serena Joy, a woman racked with self-hatred for submitting to a monstrous idea. As for Elisabeth Moss, she could do no wrong as Offred, forced mainly to suppress her feelings, which, under intolerable pressure, came gushing out in great spurting geysers. Vouchsafed a glimpse of her daughter, but denied contact, she unleashed an unbearable torrent of tears and Anglo-Saxon.
A drama about the oppression of one gender by another has been a wonderful employment opportunity for female talent behind the camera. Eight of its 10 episodes were directed by women, and the sizeable writing team overseen by showrunner Bruce Miller was mainly female. In the end, it was a man – Nick the eye (Max Minghella) – who helped release Offred from incarceration. Was it love that motivated him, or a patriarchal instinct to protect his unborn child? The Handmaid’s Tale has traded in complexity and ambivalence, so the answer was left to dangle tantalisingly till next time. Don’t expect to be gripped by a more potent or involving drama this year.
