Impossible for South Africans to watch anywhere, M-Net (DStv 101) has now acquired and added the post-apocalyptic show The Handmaid's Tale that will start on the channel on Monday 30 October at 22:00.
With Game of Thrones not eligible this year, The Handmaid's Tale swept The 69th Annual Prime Time Emmy Awards and became the toast of this year's Emmy awards with multiple wins as it also beat out Netflix to become the first-ever video streaming TV series to win the Emmy in the highly-prized Outstanding Drama Series category.
Here's the interesting part: It's the first time ever since America's Prime Time Emmy Awards TV ceremony has been broadcast on South African television that the show that won the best drama series category has not been broadcast somewhere on South African television.
It's yet another indication of just how fast and unpredictably the TV industry globally and in South Africa is changing that even legacy broadcasters and new subscription video streaming services are unable to keep up.
The Handmaid's Tale, the 32-year old story based on Margaret Atwood's post-apocalyptic book that struck a cord with Hulu viewers and Emmy voters has not been accessible to South African TV viewers despite the large number of TV services available that South African viewers can pay for.
Before its Emmy win, The Handmaid's Tale hasn't been seen anywhere on MultiChoice's DStv or StarTimes Media SA's StarSat's collection of TV channels, M-Net, the SABC, e.tv or the fast-growing flurry of subscription video-on-demand (SVOD) services like Netflix, DEOD, Showmax, ONTAPtv, Kwesé Play or Amazon Prime Video despite the growing TV watching options available to South Africans.
Out of 13 nominations, The Handmaid's Tale won 8 Emmy awards after extremely positive reviews from TV critics the past few months.
The bigger publicity and Emmy wins will undoubtedly spur some South Africans on to now use illegal online torrent sharing and downloading sites to watch episodes since The Handmaid's Tale - a show from the Hulu streaming service in America - isn't available to watch legally in South Africa anywhere.
The show's first season of 10 episodes that was filmed in Toronto, Canada, will roll out on M-Net a month and a half from now. It's not yet clear if M-Net has any plans to speed up the starting date and bring The Handmaid's Tale to South African viewers sooner following its big Emmy win on Sunday night in America.
The Handmaid's Tale is set in a near-future America, renamed Gilead - a type of oppressive, totalitarian and futuristic yet Middle Age type world destroyed by environmental pollution and sexually transmitted diseases.
As a result women's rights have been taken away as fertility plunged, with the few women who can bare children - called handmaids - being ruthlessly controlled in a new hierarchical regime of social classes.
It's in this world that June Osborne, renamed Offred - and played by Elisabeth Moss who won the Emmy for best actress in a drama series - finds herself.
Vulture nicknamed Elisabeth Moss "the Queen of Peak TV".
