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CRITIC SCORE DISTRIBUTION | ||
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Positive:
97
Mixed:
20
Negative:
2
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Critic Reviews
Apr 21, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Three episodes in, it looks like Hulu's best original yet. ... Offred's will to survive, and to somehow reclaim her stolen daughter, drives a narrative that might otherwise feel hopeless and that makes The Handmaid's Tale what every serialized show should be: a page-turner.
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Apr 21, 2017
Apr 21, 2017
Season 1 Review:
The problem with Hulu’s Handmaid is that nothing is dreadful enough. ... Ms. Moss’s Offred comments regularly on her condition with outraged, silent vulgarities, and seems appalled by rituals and outrages that had become routine in the book. ... But the original Offred was almost too terrorized to imagine defiance, much less exercise it. And such calibrated portraiture helped make the novel click.
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Apr 20, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Tale is paced maddeningly slowly (the result of taking 10 hourlong episodes to adapt a novel that was made into a single feature film in 1990) and too often belabors its most dramatic and intense moments. Even so, those moments are frequently powerful, thanks to Moss’ mesmerizing performance and a concept that is both timely and frighteningly timeless.
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ColliderApr 20, 2017
Season 1 Review:
The series is gorgeously directed, which in its own way acts as another juxtaposition to the horrors witnessed (rape, group murder, police brutality, genital mutilation, public hangings), allowing Handmaid to show the visual disconnect between the artificial world of peace that Gilead has created versus its sick reality. ... But all eyes should be trained on Moss, who again knocks it out of the park as a woman who must be meek in order to survive, but whose inner self is screaming to be released.
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TV Guide MagazineApr 13, 2017
Season 1 Review:
There's a solemn fascination in the details of soulless ritual depicted in the Handmaid's Tale ... A deadlier game of rebellion seems to be brewing, promising thrilling twists to come in this already terrific Tale. [17-30 Apr 2017, p.18]
Apr 13, 2017
Season 1 Review:
A faithful adaptation of the book that also brings new layers to Atwood’s totalitarian, sexist world of forced surrogate motherhood, this series is meticulously paced, brutal, visually stunning, and so suspenseful from moment to moment that only at the end of each hour will you feel fully at liberty to exhale.
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Apr 13, 2017
Season 1 Review:
[Elisabeth Moss'] take-and the show’s take--on the character is a distinct blend of what Atwood once identified as the main thrust of Canadian literature (survival) and a gumption most closely associated with the country Offred once called America. This can cause some tonal clash in the voice-over--the mission statement that closes episode one feels like it belongs in a different show--but it also gives The Handmaid’s Tale the necessary verve for an ongoing series.
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Apr 13, 2017
Season 1 Review:
As a show, The Handmaid's Tale is as crisply and elegantly made as anything I've seen on TV this year. It manages to bring a dystopian story to life in a way that works as episodic TV, sapping none of the book's power. This is a show that could work anytime and one that will likely be watched and discussed for years to come.
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Apr 13, 2017
Season 1 Review:
Moss’ barely-restrained fury over her new lot in life is gorgeous to behold--the other characters are equally compelling. And when we see moments that Offred simply cannot (one book diversion pertaining to Bledel’s handmaid character, Ofglen, comes to mind), that story amplification pays off.
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