This has been absolutely outstanding. It always a cause for celebration when an adaptation of a book is successful. It’s less common that the adaptation is exceptionally successful. And even rarer for the viewer to have even the occasional thought that degrees of improvement have been made on the original.
Amazingly this this trifecta has been achieved with this first series. I think a major reason for this is the pace of the adaptation. Each aspect can be fully explored and that fact that the pace of editing and length of shots is so measured (commendably unusual in todays cinematic world) means not only can details be savoured, but the mind-numbing grind and nullity of the lives of the participants is very powerfully conveyed. And this is as much true of those in power as well as the Handmaidens - particularly the wives.
It has been fascinating to watch, as the series unfolded, how Serena Joy has been shown. Gradually she has become a far more sympathetic and nuanced character than she was at the start - and in the novel, I think. And the idea to make her a little younger than in the book added a really powerful element to the relationship between her and Offred as there is not only a slightly closer connection through age, but also a more painful one for Serena Joy as she is clearly still in her potential child-bearing years, which makes her whole role and life, and particularly with the monthly Ceremony /ritualised rape) even more powerful This also allows for both greater rivalry between the two (Offred if/when she has a child will always be able to say (as will all handmaidens) that the child will always be more hers than the wife’s as she was the person who actually gave birth). I felt that at times I could see that with some of the other Handmaidens. It was and is certainly, and centrally, the case with tragic Janine.
The fleshing out of Serena Joy has also been one of the major strengths of the flashbacks where we see not only how instrumental she was in being one of the intellectual founders of Gilead, but also the touching and real relationship that she had at that time with her husband - and the way this has been curdled and corrupted by ‘the system’, is superbly powerful and moving.
The use of contemporary music is imaginative and interesting and only very occasionally jars (as with the Nina Simone number used as the Handmaidens return, triumphantly, from the abortive stoning in the final episode of the series).
It has at times been painful to watch but, oh so worth it. And now on two Series 2.