What is The Handmaid's Tale about?
Set in a dystopian future, a woman is forced to live as a concubine under a fundamentalist theocratic dictatorship.
Does it have a happy ending? (spoiler-safe)
It leaves things open rather than tying them up.
A woman navigates a bleak, fundamentalist world where survival means silent, measured defiance.
Suspenseful. A full-attention watch at a measured pace. Emotionally it is devastating.
Streaming on Hulu.
The Handmaid's Tale parents guide
For a TV-MA, this one goes further: strong sex and nudity. Beyond that, strong violence and some strong language.
- Scare
- Mildly scary
- A few tense or eerie moments.
- Jump scares
- A couple
- One or two sudden jolts.
- Gore
- Light gore
- Some blood or injury, briefly.
- Violence
- Strong violence
- Violence is frequent or intense.
- Sex and nudity
- Strong
- Strong means explicit or repeated sex, extended nudity, or sexual assault shown on screen, attempted or completed, even partly off screen. Any one of these is enough.
- Language
- Moderate
- Some strong profanity, a few f-words.
How we rate: an AI reads what is known about each title and tags it 0 to 3; we check the tags against a hand-rated set and correct them by hand when readers tell us. Estimates, not a scene-by-scene review. Spot a mistake? Tell us.
Three questions
- Is The Handmaid's Tale scary?
- Only a little. The Handmaid's Tale has a few tense moments, nothing that follows you to bed.
- How gory is The Handmaid's Tale?
- Light gore and strong violence.
- What is The Handmaid's Tale rated, and is it OK for kids?
- It is a TV-MA, with strong sex and nudity, strong violence, and some strong language. Keep it for adults.
Cast and crew
Created byBruce Miller
StarringElisabeth Moss, Yvonne Strahovski, Samira Wiley
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The Handmaid's Tale is on our Dystopias, Based on books, Hulu, Drama on Hulu and Sci-fi on Hulu lists.
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Prompts we typed into CouchRot, and the lists that share its tags.
- “a movie that will make me cry”
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Lists with the same feel: Tearjerkers.
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Uses the TMDB API; not endorsed or certified by TMDB. Intensity, content, tone and pace tags are CouchRot's own.