The Handmaid's Tale almost featured topless woman warriors
The Handmaid’s Tale is a show past its use-by date. It should have finished years ago, but production delays have meant we are seeing season six finishing over eight years since the show began. Also, was this a show that ever needed to go six seasons?
Culturally, it feels like we have all moved on from the show, even if culturally the show in its fifth and sixth seasons are more relevant than the show has ever been. With figures like JD Vance now in the White House and a changed relationship between the US and Canada, the show hits in a way that it simply wasn’t as effectively during those early seasons of the show.
Now, I have some issues with the show - the biggest being that the show often ignores some of the really interesting political and global ramifications of its concept in order to keep the show focused on the June character and the activity in Gilead. Yeah, the show should be the show, but so often it feels like the show is trying too hard to keep to the status quo.
But, The Handmaid’s Tale is good and if it’s a show that you (understandably) dropped away from, I’d encourage you to go back and give the show another look.
Ahead of the series finale next week, The Hollywood Reporter has a really good oral history on the TV show. It’s such an extreme premise for a show that there are so many ways that the show could either not happen at all, or if it did, go into some wild directions that wouldn’t befit the source material. The oral history does a good job at showing how much of a minor miracle that we got the show that we did.
I laughed at this quote from novel author Margaret Atwood about one of the earliest script efforts:
ATWOOD It was right at the moment when people were starting to worry that rights for women were going backwards. I recall that there had been an early pilot that had women going into battle with their tops off. (Laughs) “It’s television,” they said. I said that would never happen and you would lose the belief of your audience if you did that.
Something that always interested me about the show is that it is a guy writing what is a female text. Here we have EP Steve Stark and showrunner Bruce Miller talking about the decision to go with Miller:
STARK FX had been enthusiastic, but we couldn’t figure it out. There was something about Hulu’s energy and passion. Once we started negotiations, the deal was closed in 11 days. That never happens. So we had to find a showrunner. I had produced Medium with Bruce Miller years ago. [I was told] he loves this book and wanted to make the show. At the top of our search, my response was, “We can’t have Bruce. A woman must write this story.”
BRUCE MILLER (SERIES CREATOR, WRITER, EXEC PRODUCER) I read the book when I was in college. It was the first book that taught me how to write. I’m dyslexic and a poor reader. But the way Margaret wrote, I could understand better. I fell in love with the voice of Offred, who says all sorts of things that are so puzzling you think about them for years. When I became a TV writer, at some point I heard they were looking for a showrunner, and for a woman — obviously, they should be looking for a woman. It’s the job I always wanted, but I definitely felt like it’s a job that shouldn’t go to me.
STARK We kept looking at woman after woman. Finally, after three months, I said, “OK, Bruce, tell us your pitch.”
MILLER They met with lots and lots of people, and heard lots of pitches and outlandish stuff. What I pitched to them was: “Let’s make a TV show where, as much as possible, I’d like to follow the book.” I told them I found this to be scary as shit. It’s a thriller. She’s stuck in this house, it’s Rosemary’s Baby, and also it’s absurd. She’s thinking, “Oh my God, don’t hit me,” but also, “Really, you’re going to hit me? What am I, a fucking child?” You have this great internal thinking, which I always loved. Eventually they did decide to hire me.
News Desk
To almost no surprise, former Kickstarter filmmaker Zach Braff has joined the Scrubs revival show. Read: THR
Netflix has given the greenlight to a new TV show from Dan Brown and Carlton Cuse based on Brown’s next Robert Langdon novel. There’s no title or cast announced yet, but Langdon has previously been played by Tom Hanks in three feature films and by Ashley Zuckerman in a Peacock TV show. Read: Deadline
Disney+ has greenlit a UK comedy that sounds pretty wild. It’s called Alice and Steve, with Nicola Walker and Jemaine Clement set to star. Here’s the premise: The series centers on the titular lifelong best friends, whose world implodes when middle-aged Steve stars dating Alice’s 26-year-old daughter Izzy. Hopefully the show lives up to that excellent premise. Read: WorldScreen
The annual ACMA TV in Australia: Spending on Commercial TV Programs report has found a slight reduction in the amount spent on content by Australian commercial broadcasters in the 2023-24 financial year. Read: ACMA
Interestingly, the genre attracting the highest spend was light entertainment (and not sport).
Trailer Park
KPop Demon Hunters debuts on Netflix June 20.
When K-pop superstars Rumi, Mira, and Zoey aren't selling out stadiums, they're using their secret identities as demon hunters to protect their fans from ever-present supernatural danger.
Tires returns to Netflix for season 2 on June 5.
Rosario Tijeras returns for season 4 on Netflix June 18.
The Buccaneers returns for season 2 on Apple TV+ on June 18.
The Waterfront debuts June 19 on Netflix.
Inspired by true events, The Waterfront, a new series from creator of Dawson's Creek and Scream, dives into the flawed Buckley family as their attempts to retain control of their crumbling North Carolina fishing empire drive them to increasingly dangerous means to keep themselves afloat.
Thoughtful and meditative tone poem Zombies 4: Dawn of The Vampires debuts on Disney+ July 10.
Mercy For None debuts June 6 on Netflix.
After severing ties with his gang, a former gangster returns to uncover the truth behind his brother's death - embarking on a relentless path of revenge.
Glass Heart debuts July 31 on Netflix.
An aspiring drummer suddenly loses her spot in the band. But when a brilliant musician recruits her for his new band, her life takes a passionate turn.
That’s the newsletter for today.
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Thanks for linking that oral history of Handmaid’s Tale. That was a really interesting read. This stood out to me - Atwood saying of the movie they were about to make: “But we were in a period where no one could believe that the United States would ever, ever do such a thing [like the events in The Handmaid’s Tale], even though it had in the past.”
This reminded me of the book “The 4th Turning Is Here” by Neil Howe. In it, he talks of the cyclical nature of time, and how history goes through seasons, with a full cycle called a Saeculum. Spring is the “High” where everything is happy and trust in public institutions is high. The last High we had was in the 50’s and the baby boom. Summer is the “Awakening” where cracks start to emerge, and people start to question the institutions that they trusted in the High. Maybe their reach was going too far, or people started questioning the access they gave in the first place. The last Awakening we had was the hippie revolution, and anti-war movement in the wake of Vietnam. Autumn is called “the Unraveling” where individuals and fights for personal liberty peak. This was in the grunge phase in the 90’s. The Winter is called the “Crisis”. Trust in civic institutions are at an all time low, but movements into family (even “chosen” family) are more active. The individualism of the Unraveling snaps back and people group up into like-minded clans for a fight. Anything can set off a war in a Crisis period. The 2008 financial crisis started off our current Crisis period. Neil Howe calls the climax of the Crisis the “Ekpyrosis”, a word meaning the time-ending purification of fire or flood, that marks the end of one cycle into the next.
The last Ekpyrosis that we lived through as a society was WWII. That was the time-ending event, which birthed the new “High” of the 50’s.
It’s interesting that Atwood published a Handmaid’s Tale in 1985, somewhere between where Neil Howe would mark the Awakening and Unraveling. Atwood was right about the mood of society at the time. “We were in a period where no one could believe that the United States would ever, ever do such a thing.”
History repeats itself. We are back around in the time where people have the capacity to do evil things to each other. The Handmaid’s Tale is more salient to us today than it ever has been because it now more closely mirrors the period that our society is in. That initial struggle over Gilead was the Ekpyrosis in that alternate timeline. We are going through our own Ekpyrosis in real life today. We can see and understand exactly how a society like Gilead could be formed.
The good news is that we won’t be in this forever! There will be a time again where *Leave It To Beaver* is the most relatable thing on TV. Hopefully soon! 🤞