Netflix’s 'Alias Grace' Is Their Answer to ‘Handmaid’s Tale’
Was Grace Marks innocent?
Several months after The Handmaid’s Tale debuted on Hulu, Netflix joined the party by releasing a gripping trailer for its own Margaret Atwood adaptation, Alias Grace, set to premiere this fall. A period murder mystery based on Atwood’s 1996 novel about a young Irish immigrant convicted of murder, the six-episode Alias Grace is shaping up to be a compelling psychological thriller worthy of a Thanksgiving weekend binge.
In the official trailer released Friday morning, Alias Grace — a fictionalization of the 1843 murders of Thomas Kinnear and his housekeeper Nancy Montgomery — follows a poor Irish woman named Grace Marks (Sarah Gadon, *11.22.63) who emigrates to Canada as a domestic servant. There, Marks meets Kinnear’s stable hand, and together the two are tried and convicted for killing their masters. But was Grace actually guilty? In the novel, Atwood questions Grace’s sentencing by introducing a psychologist, Dr. Simon Jordan (Edward Holcroft, Kingsman: The Secret Service), who proposes Marks may have been innocent.
Also starring Anna Paquin (best known for playing Rogue in the X-Men movies) and Zachary Levi from Chuck, Alias Grace looks creepy enough to attract murder mystery fans as well as true crime buffs who may be learning about the actual 1843 murders of Kinnear and Montgomery for the first time. Also, it’s Netflix, it’s hard not to binge anything on there. (Except for Iron Fist.)
Alias Grace will premiere on Netflix on November 3.
