The Handmaid's Tale

That's one way of putting it.

I stand corrected. I've never been to the US but have cousins in Maine. They talk about visiting Boston and, for some reason, I had assumed Boston was in Maine.

And you know way too much about the locations ;-) 

I'm tempted to riposte with the Catford locations used in the TV play Babs but it's much less exotic.

It's still working but is rarely played. They had a session last year where they got an organist in and put cameras in the loft so we could see all the instruments up above. So when he pressed "cymbal" we could see the cymbal being hit. They also operated the baffles above the stage so we could see the 'volume control' - closed = quiet, open = loud. Then he played along to an Elsa Lanchester silent film - she's a local girl apparently.

I think that, after the darkness of this season, the chinks of light are going to get bigger and the resistance will become more organised. Also we will probably get more of a sense of what happened with the setting up of Gilead and its first days, What happened in the colonies is currently very opaque, for example. Now we know what has been going on beneath the surface, it makes more sense of the surface. The filming in the snow was also absolutely beautifully done, I thought (I say this as someone who pines for Winter in the Summer!)

To watch it, I realised I had to stop thinking as me here and now and to to try and figure out how such a situation might affect me there and then, We are in a world which is teetering, which is one thing, but what if we were in a world that had already gone too far?

I just hope this series moves a bit quicker than the last one. They could have put the whole series into a 1 hour episode.
Lots of staring at the camera close up.

I agree with you peggs - I really enjoyed the book from studying it at college and thought series one was excellent (series two less so) but it is quite dark/grim so I make sure to watch it then follow it with something a bit more lighthearted. This first episode was very slow, hope the rest of the series picks up.

This series has been so slow and I wasn’t sure it was going to pick up in terms of quality but last night’s episode has given me some hope, it was very good. Lots of seeds dropped to develop over the next few episodes.

They don’t need a honeytrap, they can convict and execute without anything resembling a fair trial. On who gets to do what or who knows what, it’s a fascist state, it is only relevant if those in charge decide it is so.

The cracks in the dam are there but, as we can see from a part of a world that has elected a racist president who would be quite happy in fomenting a race war, all that matters is if they retain their usefulness in maintaining power.

Is this the last season or is there another one?

Nick's background has always been very grey, we know next to nothing about him (I can't recall seeing if there have been any flashbacks for him). That has most definitely been on purpose and planned for. 

As far as how other countries treat Gilead then we only have to see how our governments treat powerful states that have shocking human rights records (Saudi, for example, whose treatment of women is appalling). Of course, they'd negotiate handing the baby back if they thought it would make Canada safer, that's how governments work.

I'm not sure looking to the book is much use at this point, given how it has diverted already, the map seen earlier shows that it has already exploded a handful of nuclear weapons on its own territory (mostly California, which presumably was seen as a prime place to bring under control quickly) and, given how many nuclear weapons the USA has, they will have a lot left to threaten others with.

The 'colonies' and their toxic environment look as though they were caused by these explosions (they appear to be mostly the 'flyover' states). They have nuclear weapons and are happy to use them, and that's as much military capability as they need.

How did the iron curtain fall? By the revolt of its own people, backed by regime members who saw which way the wind was blowing. That looks like the most likely way for Gilead to fall. Other countries may have their spies embedded in the regime but only when they sense a popular revolt will they make decisive moves. 

The first season made it absolutely clear that the fertility issue is global - remember Mexico sending a delegation and considering taking Handmaids?

Now, in the book - which i agree is an unreliable guide to the show’s trajectory - I would say that it was debatable whether the fertility issue was global.