The Handmaid's Tale TV Series Wins Emmy Awards, Premieres on TIMvision

The television adaptation of Margaret Atwood's novel The Handmaid's Tale, created by Bruce Miller, premiered its first season of ten episodes on Hulu in the US and will be available on TIMvision in Italy from September 26. At the Emmy Awards on September 17, the series won Best Drama Series, Best Lead Actress for Elisabeth Moss, and Best Supporting Actress for Ann Dowd. The source novel was published in Canada in 1985 and in the UK and US in 1986. Previous adaptations include a 1990 film directed by Volker Schlöndorff with a screenplay by Harold Pinter, and a 2000 opera directed by Poul Ruders with libretto by Paul Bentley. The series is set in Gilead, a theocracy in the former United States, where fertile women are forced into reproductive servitude due to pollution and fertility collapse. A second season is already confirmed and in production. Floria Sigismondi, a filmmaker and artist from Pescara, directed episodes six and seven. In a 2012 Guardian essay, Atwood noted that the story's roots lie in 17th-century Puritan New England theocracy, not Enlightenment ideals, and that she included no act that humans have not already committed elsewhere or at another time.