The Handmaid's Tale trailer: Hulu's adaptation proves the eerie relevance of Margaret Atwood's novel

For free real time breaking news alerts sent straight to your inbox sign up to our breaking news emails

Sign up to our free breaking news emails

Please enter a valid email address

Please enter a valid email address

SIGN UP

I would like to be emailed about offers, events and updates from The Independent. Read our privacy notice

Margaret Atwood's 1985 novel The Handmaid's Tale has never felt more eerily prescient than now.

As demonstrated when, last Monday, activists arrived to the Texas Senate chambers to protest two anti-choice bills, dressed in full red robes and white bonnets as an homage to the "handmaids" of Atwood's novel.

The book sets itself in the fictional Republic of Gilead, an authoritarian theocracy which comes to power in the US. Women here are treated as nothing more than wives, servants, or breeders, referred to as "handmaids"; with Offred being one of these women denigrated and exploited for her fertility in ongoing efforts to repopulate the country, though she still fights for her freedom and for the husband and child snatched away from her.

A woman's fight for the ownership of her own body has obvious modern parallels, and it's clear that Hulu's adaptation isn't shying away from its political relevance; as Elisabeth Moss' Offred opens the trailer with, "I was asleep before. That's how we let it happen. When they slaughtered Congress, we didn't wake up. When they blamed terrorists and suspended the Constitution, we didn't wake up then either. Now I'm awake."

Moss is set to star alongside the likes of Samira Wiley (Orange is the New Black), Joseph Fiennes (Shakespeare in Love), and Alexis Bledel (Gilmore Girls).

The 10-episode series will debut on Hulu on 26 April.