Imagine a world where women are completely stripped of their rights, autonomy and identities, their only purpose to serve as vessels for procreation. Sounds bleak, right? Well that’s the smoke black premise of Hulu’s hotly anticipated series The Handmaid’s Tale, based on Canadian novelist Margaret Atwood’s seminal piece of dystopian science fiction.
In the show’s just released first teaser, we get a brief but riveting look at Offred, the show’s central heroine played by Elisabeth Moss, who’s just straight up killing it post-Mad Men. We see flashes of the world she once knew, before it was overthrown by a radical theocratic regime known as The Gilead.
We’re also introduced to Offred’s current reality, one that finds her as a handmaid tasked with carrying the child of a ruling commander. But what she really wants is to find the young daughter who was taken from her when things went to hell. Her only choice is to survive a world ruled by fear, oppression, and a scowling Ann Dowd doing what she does best.
Joining Dowd and Moss is a stellar cast that incudes the just-announced Alexis Bledel, Joseph Fiennes, Yvonne Strahovski, Max Minghella, and Samira Wiley of Orange Is The New Black fame.
There are a ton of promising new shows on the way this year, from The Young Popeto Big Little Lies. But based on the clip above, The Handmaid’s Tale might just top the list. We’ll find out when it premieres April 26 on Hulu.
