You’re the first person I’ve ever encountered who preferred the film of The Handmaid’s Tale to the novel. :)
That’s because I get annoyed with Margaret Atwood, even though she’s a great novelist. The premise in that one was that fundamentalist Christians had taken over and created this dystopia. But the closest thing in real life to these societies was either Ceaucescus Romania or the Taliban, anything but Christian. She said that people took the novel more seriously than she had intended, but I think it made some people scared of Christians.
OK, so then she writes Oryx and Crake, another dystopian tale, really a good story, with compelling characters, but who is the villain? Genetically modified plants. I could think of a few more plausible villains, but she doesn’t seem to want to touch them.
The Blind Assassin and The Robber Bride are two of my all time favorite novels, though.