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8 Shows Like The Handmaid's Tale to Watch Until Hulu Releases Season 5

Blessed be these shows

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Kelly Connolly
Elisabeth Moss, The Handmaid's Tale

Elisabeth Moss, The Handmaid's Tale

Sophie Giraud, Hulu

The Handmaid's Tale has been finding new ways to torment its characters and its audience for four seasons, and the Emmy-winning Hulu drama shows no signs of slowing down. The series is one of the most brutally dark shows on TV, but it's hard not to be fascinated by its unpredictable storytelling. It's been renewed for Season 5, but with no premiere date announced yet, it still might be a while before we get an update on June's (Elisabeth Moss) fight to bring down the oppressive regime of Gilead.

If you're looking for similar shows to watch while you wait, check out these dramas that dig into the same big ideas. Whether you're in the mood for for more dystopias, women surviving in a sexist society, or people undermining the government, you'll find something on this list to enjoy (even if you enjoy being miserable).

Watch The Handmaid's Tale Stream on Hulu

Looking for more recommendations for what to watch next? We have a ton of them! And if you're looking for more hand-picked recommendations based on TV shows you love, we have those too, as well as recommendations for Netflix (movies/shows), Amazon Prime Video (movies/shows), Hulu (movies/shows), Disney+ (movies/shows), HBO Max (movies/shows), Apple TV+, and Peacock.


The Americans

Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell, The Americans

Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell, The Americans

Jeffrey Neira/FX

The Americans may not be set in a dystopian alternate timeline, but it does suggest that maybe the real dystopia was inside America all along. Joe Weisberg's exquisite Cold War spy drama stars Matthew Rhys and Keri Russell as a pair of Russian intelligence officers posing as a suburban American couple in the 1980s, carrying out espionage in the basement of their picture-perfect home. Their careful plotting against the government is less explosive than June's but even more tense and thrilling. But beyond the international intrigue, The Americans is ultimately a family drama about the challenges of marriage and parenthood in a hostile country. Philip and Elizabeth's perspective as outsiders pushes the audience to look sideways at American culture and politics in the same unsettling way The Handmaid's Tale finds the roots of Gilead in modern America. Both shows tap into the fear of raising children in a violent world, and few shows have ever done it better than The Americans.


The Plot Against America

John Turturro, The Plot Against America

John Turturro, The Plot Against America

Michele K. Short

The Plot Against America was swallowed in the chaos of the month it debuted in, March 2020, but it shouldn't be missed. The devastating HBO limited series, written by The Wire's David Simon and Ed Burns and based on the novel by Philip Roth, imagines an alternate version of American history in which celebrity aviator Charles Lindbergh ran for president in 1940 on a fascist, isolationist platform and won the election over Franklin D. Roosevelt. The story plays out through the eyes of a working class Jewish American family in Newark, New Jersey, whose pursuit of the American dream crumbles as America slides into fascism. Like The Handmaid's Tale, it's a dark allegory for the Trump administration that explores how hateful people can be and how quickly the world can change because of it. It's an astounding gut punch.


Alias Grace

Sarah Gadon, Alias Grace

Sarah Gadon, Alias Grace

Jan Thijs/Netflix

To spend more time inside the world of Margaret Atwood, you could crack open a book, or you could watch Alias Grace, an Atwood adaptation that's as succinct and grueling as The Handmaid's Tale is long and grueling. The six-part miniseries, directed by American Psycho's Mary Harron and written by actress-turned-filmmaker Sarah Polley, is another harrowing look at the horrors inflicted on women, but this one rails against the patriarchy of the past instead of the near future. Sarah Gadon is electric as Grace Marks, a maid famous for committing a murder she can't remember, spinning her possibly unreliable tale to a psychiatrist sent to judge her sanity. Inspired by the real-life 19th century killer of the same name, it's a true crime drama in the form of an eerie period piece.


Mad Men

Mad Men

Mad Men

Frank Ockenfels/AMC

For even more toxic patriarchy, watch Mad MenMatthew Weiner's glossy golden-age drama about 1960s advertising is as good as advertised, and it has a lot more to offer Handmaid's Tale fans than another stellar Elisabeth Moss performance (although it has that too). The AMC series is sharp about the ways women are shamed and diminished in a male-dominated culture, especially if they try to step outside the life that's expected of them. The women of Mad Men, including Moss' career girl Peggy Olson, Christina Hendricks' unflappable Joan Holloway, and January Jones' Betty Draper, a housewife in a gilded cage, pay a steep price to define themselves. Mad Men's setting in a tumultuous decade also makes it better than any show out there at capturing what it feels like to live through history.


The Good Fight

Michael Boatman, Delroy Lindo, Christine Baranski, Audra McDonald, The Good Fight

Michael Boatman, Delroy Lindo, Christine Baranski, Audra McDonald, The Good Fight

Patrick Harbron/CBS

While The Handmaid's Tale leans into the bleakness of the Trump era, The Good Fight stares down the barrel of its absurdity. Robert and Michelle King's no-holds-barred follow-up to The Good Wife follows Christine Baranski's Diane Lockhart as she takes a new job with a majority Black law firm that regularly wades into scalding-hot political waters; in one episode, a client who may or may not be Melania Trump looks into getting a divorce. The Good Fight will try anything, from a catchy animated musical sequence about impeachment to Jeffrey Epstein conspiracy theories to slapping a "CBS has censored this content" message on content the network actually censored. But the outrageous controlled chaos is all in service of the show's incendiary rage at an unequal justice system. The Good Fight calls out corporate feminism and liberals who abandon their principles to get ahead, exploring the intersection of race and power more directly than The Handmaid's Tale does. And it's fun! It's a legal drama for the age of no rules.


Harlots

Harlots

Harlots

Liam Daniel, Hulu

If you wish The Handmaid's Tale had dedicated more time to life inside the brothel and sex club known as Jezebel's, check out Harlots. The British-American period piece revolves around Samantha Morton's Margaret Wells, the madam of an up-and-coming brothel in 18th century London. The series is frank about the fact that sex work is the only chance most of these women have to advance in society, and about the ways it can be empowering one day and abusive the next. On Harlots, like on The Handmaid's Tale, women are forced to use their bodies to survive. But on top of the show's substantial exploration of the power dynamics of sex work, Harlots can also be a soapy, bodice-ripping pleasure. What's impressive is how well it handles the serious stuff while still being a romp.


Colony

Alex Neustaedter, Isabella Crovetti-Cramp, Sarah Wayne Callies, Josh Holloway, Colony

Alex Neustaedter, Isabella Crovetti-Cramp, Sarah Wayne Callies, Josh Holloway, Colony

Paul Drinkwater/USA Network

The underrated Colony will scratch your itch for both dystopia and sci-fi. Created by Lost's Carlton Cuse and Ryan J. Condal, the USA Network series is set in a near-future version of Los Angeles that's under military occupation by mysterious outside forces. Former FBI agent Will Bowman (Josh Holloway) and his family, including wife Katie (Sarah Wayne Callies), find themselves on different sides of the resistance as they try to survive. Cuse and Condal conceived the drama as a metaphor for the Nazi occupation of Paris during World War II; Colony doesn't care about detailed sci-fi explanations as much as it cares about how it feels to live in a repressive regime, which gives it plenty in common with The Handmaid's Tale. Both shows are immersive allegories for how people cope when the government turns on them.


3%

3%

3%

Netflix

If you're after a dystopian thriller with more of a YA flavor, watch Netflix's Brazilian drama 3%. Set in a reality where 20-year-olds compete to earn their way out of their impoverished mainland and onto a supposed island paradise, 3% follows a diverse handful of hopefuls who each enter the competition — known as The Process — for their own reasons. It's like a version of The Hunger Games where murder is optional. And, like both The Hunger Games and The Handmaid's Tale, it's a story driven by class tensions. 3% is an entertaining takedown of the myth that rich people deserve the right to crush less privileged people under their heels. Sound familiar?