TV Shows Like The Handmaid's Tale
If you like The Handmaid's Tale, here are 11 similar TV shows — each with its current AI renewal verdict, so you can see which are still going and which have been cancelled.
Hulu · Drama · The Handmaid's Tale is ended
The Handmaid's Tale works because it takes an extreme premise seriously. Gilead is a theocratic dictatorship where women have been stripped of every legal and personal right, and the show never lets you forget the specific, bodily reality of that. It is not a show about ideas at a safe distance. It is about control, survival, and the small acts of resistance that become the only thing a person has left. The dystopia is recognizable enough to be genuinely unsettling, and that combination of political horror and intimate human drama is what keeps its audience hooked.
The best shows like The Handmaid's Tale
1. Black Mirror
Black Mirror shares The Handmaid's Tale's interest in how systems, whether political, technological, or social, can reduce people to instruments. Each episode is its own self-contained nightmare, so the tone and setting shift constantly, but the underlying concern about power and dehumanization is consistent. Fans who appreciate the way Gilead functions as a warning will find plenty of the same unease here.
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Renewed100%
2. The Testaments
The Testaments is the most obvious next step for anyone who wants more time in Gilead, based on Margaret Atwood's sequel novel and picking up with a new generation of young women who have grown up knowing nothing else. It carries the same themes of totalitarianism, resistance, and the cost of freedom, just from a fresh set of perspectives. If the world-building of The Handmaid's Tale was what gripped you, this is the most direct continuation of that.
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On the Bubble42%
3. The Man in the High Castle
The Man in the High Castle imagines the United States under Axis occupation after a different outcome to World War II, and it takes that premise with the same seriousness The Handmaid's Tale brings to Gilead. The show is interested in how ordinary people collaborate, resist, or simply survive under a totalitarian state, which is familiar territory for fans of Offred's story. It is slower and more sprawling, but the political dread is real.
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4. The Wheel of Time
The Wheel of Time is a bigger departure in terms of genre, landing squarely in epic fantasy, but it puts women at the center of its power structures in ways that feel thematically connected to The Handmaid's Tale. The world has its own rigid hierarchies and prophecies that characters must navigate or push against, and the show does not shy away from the tension between agency and fate. Fans who respond to strong female characters fighting for space in a world not built for them will find something here.
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Cancelled0%
5. Tales from the Darkside
Tales from the Darkside is a looser fit, an anthology horror series from George A. Romero that leans into darkness, irony, and the occasional plot twist rather than sustained political allegory. That said, fans of The Handmaid's Tale who enjoy the show's more Gothic and surreal moments may find its short-story format a good way to explore adjacent territory. It works best when you treat it as a mood piece rather than a thematic companion.
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More on shows like The Handmaid's Tale
Fans of the show tend to be drawn to two things: worlds built around oppression and the fight against it, and stories that take genre seriously as a vehicle for social and political ideas. They are not necessarily looking for hope, but they are looking for characters with something at stake. The best recommendations in this group share at least one of those qualities, and several share both.
The most direct follow-on is The Testaments, which returns to Gilead itself and centers a new generation of young women navigating the same system. For something with a similar political weight but a different setting, The Man in the High Castle asks what America would look like under fascist occupation, and it carries much of the same dread. Black Mirror is the most stylistically different pick here, being an anthology without recurring characters, but its interest in how power and technology reshape human behavior puts it in the same emotional neighborhood. The Wheel of Time is the outlier in terms of genre, leaning into epic fantasy rather than political allegory, though it does center women with agency in a world trying to deny it. Tales from the Darkside is the lightest fit of the bunch, a horror anthology with a very different tone, but fans who enjoy the darker, more surreal edges of The Handmaid's Tale may find individual episodes worth their time.
None of these are perfect substitutes, because The Handmaid's Tale is fairly singular in what it does. But each one offers something a fan of the show is likely to respond to, whether that is the weight of a totalitarian world, the satisfaction of watching people resist it, or simply the willingness to go to uncomfortable places in the name of a story worth telling.
More shows like The Handmaid's Tale
Frequently asked
- What is the most popular show like The Handmaid's Tale?
- Black Mirror is the most popular show similar to The Handmaid's Tale in the IsItRenewed catalogue.
- Are shows like The Handmaid's Tale still on the air?
- Of the 11 shows similar to The Handmaid's Tale listed here, 1 currently carry a renewed verdict — the rest are cancelled, ended, or awaiting a decision.
- How does IsItRenewed pick shows like The Handmaid's Tale?
- The recommendations come from TMDB's similar-titles data, and each is shown with its current AI renewal verdict so you know which are still going.