margaret atwood

Remember those last few seasons of Game of Thrones, and especially the finale? How a series that started strong took a dive once it moved past the plot written by its original author, George R. R. Martin, and, to many of its critics, became not just mediocre but outright bad in its home stretch, turning complex, nuanced characters into caricatures of themselves?

I enjoyed Game of Thrones in its first few seasons yet also found its last third disappointing, but for me, that disappointment was rather abstract. I didn’t take the series’ nosedive personally. Sure, I would have preferred for it to remain good, but I didn’t end up hate-watching the final few seasons, I just disengaged and got what fun there was to be had out of the spectacle and the nonsensical plot developments, at arms’ length.

Sadly, this didn’t work for me with The Handmaid’s Tale.

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Over the last couple of weeks, we watched the 2017 Netflix series Alias Grace. It is a smart, stylish adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s novel, with strong writing by Sarah Polley and direction by Mary Harron (of American Psycho fame), and the acting is impeccable, especially when it comes to Sarah Gadon as the Irish maid Grace Marks who may or may not have helped murder her employer and his housekeeper. The series handles tone and genre well, navigating between historical drama, dry black comedy, true crime, gothic horror and deft commentary on gender, class truth and fiction.

And about halfway through the final episode I thought that Alias Grace isn’t all that different from that film with the robot.