Each week, NPR TV critic Eric Deggans writes about what he's watching.
This much is obvious: Given President Donald Trump's controversial to , , and , it may be tough for some people to watch this new, final season of Hulu's The Handmaid's Tale.
Some Trump opponents, when criticizing his policies, to Hulu's show – which dramatizes Margaret Atwood's apocalyptic novel of the same name about a brutally repressive, theocratic government seizing control of much of the United States. In this world, women are second-class citizens; many of those capable of bearing children are forced into sexual slavery as "handmaids" – impregnated by the country's leaders in a dehumanizing ritual.
For its sixth and final season, which debuts Tuesday, Hulu's version of The Handmaid's Tale shows the theocracy of Gilead basking in military success and highlighting a new community designed to offer a space where women can have a few more rights, aimed at convincing the world to ease off its opposition.
The Handmaid's Tale aired its previous season in 2022, resonating with a very different real-world political atmosphere. On the show, Elisabeth Moss' former handmaid June Osborne was living as a refugee in Canada, trying to survive attempts by Gilead to assassinate her. In the last episode, while riding to sanctuary in Alaska, June discovered she was in the same train car as Yvonne Strahovski's Serena Joy Waterford — the former wife of an official who raped her as a handmaid.
The new season picks up in that moment, exploring the idea of whether anyone so traumatized can or should forgive someone who played a big part in authoring that trauma. Indeed, much of the show's final season focuses on themes regular viewers will know well: Does revenge harm the seeker as much as the target? Can love bridge fundamental differences between two people on issues of social responsibility and survival? Is it wise to keep fighting when your opponent seems to hold all the cards?
The Handmaid's Tale is another series that demands viewers see calamities such as enslavement, refugees fleeing violence and crackdowns on immigration through different lenses. In this final run of episodes, Canada is losing patience with the American refugees it is sheltering. Given the current geopolitical tensions between the U.S. and Canada, and the real-world plight of some immigrants seeking asylum in the U.S. from Latin American countries, these storylines offer more than one allegory to actual events.
In its sixth season, the series struggles to settle on a new identity for Moss' June, who has morphed over several seasons from someone just trying to survive a brutal world to a rebel challenging the system, then an angry seeker of vengeance. Now, she's forced to reconsider all those ideas when former foes become uneasy allies. Moss herself has also been on a journey you can see in the show's storytelling – winning two Emmy awards , along with eventually directing episodes.
There are times when The Handmaid's Tale can still feel like an apocalyptic soap opera, with June and her plucky band of rebels staying one step ahead of their authoritarian foes in ways which often seem outlandishly impossible.
But it also asks if there could be a way to somehow build shaky alliances with people willing to pull back from extremism and consider a different path. Which may be the closest thing to a conciliatory message our turbulent times can provide.
What else I'm watchingÂ
Hacks
This Emmy-winning comedy has already conquered Hollywood with its story of an aging female comic finding success with her frenemy late-20s writer. So why not tackle a real challenge in its fourth season: Saving late night TV talk shows? For its new season, Jean Smart's sharp tongued Deborah Vance chafes after being blackmailed into hiring her writer, Hannah Einbinder's goofily ambitious Ava Daniels, as head writer for a late night series she will star in.
As usual, Hacks shines best when focused on friction between these two, at odds early on because neither can admit how their narcissism and ruthlessness constantly undercuts a relationship which works for both of them — when they let it. The regular cast is sharp as ever, topped by co-creator Paul W. Downs, who also plays Jimmy, manager to both Ava and Deborah. But can this crew overcome their dysfunction to triumph in a genre which has aced out names like Taylor Tomlinson and James Corden? It's going to be loads of fun watching them try.
Your Friends & Neighbors
Only an actor as skilled as Jon Hamm – who built fame by making us care about TV's biggest narcissist, Mad Men's Don Draper – could also make the audience care about a guy who may be TV's biggest jerk right now, Andrew "Coop" Cooper. Forced out of his high-paying job as a hedge fund manager, Cooper is a debt-ridden, divorced dad who decides to maintain his high-end lifestyle by robbing the sprawling McMansions of neighbors in his moneyed East Coast enclave. It takes a while to get past the obvious portions of Coop's downward spiral – the empty hypocrisy of his wealthy buddies' excesses, the hollow self-centeredness which leads to his life of crime, and more. But as the story turns from social satire to layered whodunit and spiky legal drama, this show begins to prove why it's worthy of viewers' full attention.
Doctor Who
As a longtime "Whovian" fan, it has been a blast to see this British science fiction classic reset itself yet again starting last year with Black, queer thirtysomething star, returned showrunner Russell T. Davies, a budget boosted by an alliance with Disney and a renewed creative sense. Fans know the show has been reinventing itself since its debut in 1963, and Gatwa's version of the show's time travelling, universe-galavanting alien Time Lord — known simply as The Doctor — is more impish and fun loving than some previous iterations. Still, as the series welcomes a new human companion for him in Varada Sethu's steely health care professional Belinda Chandra, there is a nagging sense they have not quite nailed down a distinct take on this new Doctor, now tasked with saving Chandra from a murderous alien cybernetic intelligence that spans decades.
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