Praise Be! If you’re a fan of The Handmaid’s Tale and The Testaments, Netflix has just handed you the perfect series to add to your watch list in the form of Unchosen.
A cult-based show based on the experiences of real survivors, the women from Unchosen could’ve been pulled straight from Gilead.
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That’s until Mrs Phillips (Siobhan Finneran) arrives to berate one of the ‘happy’ children for being unclean and reading a comic – all the Satan-related threats are thrown at one poor child who will no doubt have ongoing nightmares about the flames of hell just for daring to read.
And from this shattered utopia, elements of The Handmaid’s Tale rise. There’s no infertility epidemic, so women aren’t forcibly impregnated, but they are made to adorn Martha-esque modest outfits with and have their heads covered.
Wives have bible lines quoted to them about submitting to their husbands should they dare to voice an opinion, and sex is not something the men put any effort into making sure their wives enjoy.
The subjugated women also give birth in a similarly The Handmaid’s Tale communal way. The cult’s women gather to assist the delivery, but no pain relief of professional medical help is offered.
The men largely get to do what they want and congratulate themselves for being so important, safe as long as they don’t touch a mobile phone. Landlines and electricity for basic needs is allowed, but mobiles are “pipelines of pornography and sewage to our souls.”
But where you get forced control with no ability to act in a way that’s actually human, you’re bound to get rebellion – and that’s where Rosie comes in.
(Image credit: Rekha Garton/Netflix)
Married to Adam (Asa Butterfield,) who’d literally throw his own family under the bus to work his way to the top in the cult, Rosie unsurprisingly doesn’t seem especially happy in her marriage.
Forbidden to be in the nearby forest but there to look for her missing daughter, Grace, Rosie comes across Sam, rising like an Adonis from a lake.
Dark, tattooed, ripped and arriving in a cloud of religious symbolism (he even has a hole hammered through one hand,) the aghast Grace later asks, “Was he Jesus?”
He might well be to Rosie – Sam could be the leader sent from above to take her down a path of much-needed sexual exploration. There’s absolutely no wonder she’s immediately hot under the collar for him.
While it’s best to let viewers see how the character’s stories play out for themselves, it’s interesting to note that while they might seem wild, real people experience similar situations in cults every day.
Series creator Julie Gearey discovered that there are over 2000 cults currently operating in the United Kingdom alone, while researching for the series – some academics believe this number could be higher.
“When society is going through a period of extreme uncertainty – like we are now – that’s when these cults rise up,” she tells Netflix Tudum.
Speaking to cult survivors and escapees while writing the show, Julie says, “What we found was that quite a lot of them were traumatised,” adding, “It was important to reassure them as much as we could that, firstly, nobody watching the show would ever recognise them.”
“Secondly,” she continues, “that whatever they had to say about the emotional experience of being involved, we would try to respect and reflect as truthfully as possible within the show.”
Unchosen airs from April 21 on Netflix.
‘ The preceding article may include information circulated by third parties ’
‘ Some details of this article were extracted from the following source www.womanandhome.com ’
