How to watch The Handmaid’s Tale season 5: Stream the penultimate season in the UK, US and abroad
With things coming to a head in Gilead, and a sequel series in the works, you’re not going to want to miss The Handmaid’s Tale season 5
Ever since season four’s intense finale and cliffhanger ending, fans have been eagerly awaiting the return of The Handmaid’s Tale. With season six confirmed to be wrapping things up, and series creator Bruce Miller already working on a sequel series based on Margaret Atwood’s Booker Prize winning novel, The Testaments, it seems events in Gilead are destined only to escalate further, as the show builds itself up to what promises to be an epic and shocking conclusion. For all the information you’ll need on how to watch The Handmaid’s Tale season five, read on below.
Season five of The Handmaid’s Tale kicked off in the US on 14 September with a two-episode double bill arriving on streaming service Hulu, where episodes will drop weekly thereafter. Fans in the UK will have to wait a little longer it seems, with season five likely to debut in late 2022 or early 2023, broadcasting on Channel 4 and streaming on Prime Video. That said, anyone looking to get up to speed on The Handmaid’s Tale can find the complete first four seasons on Amazon’s streaming service.
If you’re likely to be out of your home country during the period that season five airs, you might find your access to streaming services such as Hulu is hampered by region-based restrictions, which can prevent you from accessing certain content, or even entire streaming services themselves.
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What is The Handmaid’s Tale about?
The Handmaid’s Tale is based on Canadian author Margaret Atwood’s 1985 novel of the same name, and is set in the fictional dystopia of Gilead. In the imagined future of the novel, amid declining birth rates, environmental collapse and social unrest, a Second American Civil War is fought, and the fascist-theocratic nation of Gilead is founded, based on warped religious principles and the enslavement of fertile women, called handmaids, for forced child-bearing. The show follows June Osborne, a woman who is captured and held in Gilead as a handmaid, as she attempts to navigate her nightmarish new reality and find some means of escape.
The show boasts an impressive cast and crew, starring Elizabeth Moss (Mad Men, The Invisible Man) as June, alongside Joseph Fiennes (Shakespeare in Love, American Horror Story), Yvonne Strahovski (Dexter, The Tomorrow War), Alexis Biedel (Mad Men, Gilmore Girls), Madeline Brewer (Orange is the New Black, Cam), Ann Dowd (The Leftovers, Hereditary), Max Minghella (The Social Network, Spiral), and more. Behind the camera, the show is overseen by Bruce Miller, previously known for writing credits on shows like ER, Everwood, Medium and The 100, and has seen episodes directed by Jeremy Podeswa (Game of Thrones, Station Eleven), Kari Skogland (The Walking Dead, Falcon and The Winter Soldier), and lead actress Elizabeth Moss herself, who directs the season five’s opening episodes. As well as getting its fair share of rave reviews and accruing a loyal fanbase, the show has picked up 15 Primetime Emmys and six Golden Globes, including Best Drama TV Series.
How to watch The Handmaid’s Tale Season 5 in the UK: Prime Video
As of yet, there is no confirmed release date for The Handmaid’s Tale season 5 in the UK. However, if season 5 follows the pattern of previous seasons, it will air on Channel 4 at some point after its US rollout is finished, as Channel 4 currently holds the UK broadcasting rights for the show. Another place the show is likely to pop up on is Prime Video UK, where the first four seasons are currently available to watch. If you’d like to catch up on those previous seasons, as well as check out top-drawers movies and TV series such as The Boys, The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power, Reacher, The Marvellous Mrs. Maisel, No Time to Die and Tenet, Prime Video is available for just £8.99/mth following a 30-day free trial. If you’re likely to stick with the streaming service for at least a year, you can save roughly £13 (compared to paying monthly for 12 months) by signing up to a £95/yr annual subscription.
How to watch The Handmaid’s Tale Season 5 in the US: Hulu
Catching season 5 of the Handmaid’s Tale stateside is a simple affair, with all previous seasons, as well as new episodes, available on US streaming Hulu. The first two episodes of season 5 released on 14 September and will continue to drop weekly until the series concludes on 9 November. Prospective Hulu customers can expect to find a veritable treasure trove of content on the streaming service, including newly released Predator prequel Prey, viral chef drama The Bear, and hot-ticket movies and TV shows such as Abbott Elementary, The Worst Person in the World, Spencer, Titane, Atlanta and more.
After a free month-long trial, a Hulu subscription will set you back $6.99/mth, or just $69.99/yr, for their ad-supported tier, and $12.99/mth for ad-free streaming. When it comes to bundle deals, Hulu offers some of the more interesting streaming packages. A bundle which includes Hulu, Disney Plus and sports streaming service ESPN+ is available for $13.99/mth ad-supported, and $19.99/mth for those who prefer to watch without interruptions.
How to watch The Handmaid’s Tale Season 5 from anywhere in the world: Use a good quality VPN
Accessing your favourite streaming services from abroad can prove troublesome, with services often blocking your access based on geographical location – which is no good if you fancy watching a few episodes of your favourite shows while on a holiday or business trip. If you encounter this problem, a VPN might be your best option for solving it. For those of you who don’t know, a VPN, or Virtual Private Network, is privacy software which allows you to browse the web without being logged or monitored. It does this, in part, by rerouting your traffic through different servers across the globe – and its this rerouting process which can allow you to obfuscate your location.
For a more detailed explanation, read our full What is a VPN? guide, and for more options and information, check out our best VPN round-up. If you’re ready to dive in, however, we’ve written up short reviews of our two favourite VPNs just below:
ExpressVPN is a zippy and steadfast VPN, receiving high praise from the security-minded due to its independently audited no-logs policy, whose transparency helps assuage any doubts about whether or not your data is properly private. Beyond that, it performs consistently well at its core tasks, reliably allowing users to spoof their location and doing so with excellent streaming and download speeds to boot. In testing, the VPN allowed us to stream multiple 4K videos from American servers without any trouble. Other perks of the service include 24/7 customer support, a 30-day money back guarantee, and, here’s one just for Expert Reviews readers who use the link below, three free months when you first sign up. For more information on what makes ExpressVPN a stellar choice, have a look at our full-length ExpressVPN review.
NordVPN is an old favourite here at Expert Reviews, having bagged itself five stars and our highly coveted Best Buy award in our original full-length NordVPN review. In that review, we praise NordVPN for its security credentials, as it also operates an independent-verified no-logs policy and is registered in Panama, which means that your data is beyond the remit of governmental agencies in the UK, US and EU. Besides that, NordVPN offers access to over 5,500 servers across 60 different countries. This wouldn’t mean much, of course, if the location spoofing wasn’t reliable or the streaming and download speeds weren’t up to snuff, but, thankfully, NordVPN excels in both reliability and speediness. Once you’ve signed up, you can use NordVPN on up to six devices, avail of 24/7 customer support, and get your money back if you’re not satisfied within the first 30 days – though we doubt many people have ever had cause to to do so.