If Margaret Atwood didn’t already exist, 2017 would have had to invent her.

Earlier this year, Hulu’s Emmy-winning adaptation of her novel “The Handmaid’s Tale” looked to the near future for a story of women bound in servitude. Now, Netflix’s six-part mini-series version of her “Alias Grace,” looks back a century and a half to find a story that is much the same in theme, but transfixingly different in style.

“Alias Grace,” available to stream on Friday, is a true-crime mystery in the form of an elliptical interrogation. It opens in 1859, in Victorian Canada, where Grace Marks (Sarah Gadon), a household servant, has been imprisoned for the 1843 murder of a farmer (Paul Gross) and his housekeeper (Anna Paquin).

Grace is a sensation, a celebrity even, in large part because she’s a young, mild-mannered woman. That circumstance affects every aspect of her case.

The actual killer, a stable hand (Kerr Logan) accuses her of using her wiles to manipulate him and mastermind the crime. She attracts the paternalistic interest of benefactors who want to see her pardoned. They hire a progressive young doctor, Simon Jordan (Edward Holcroft), to question and hopefully save her — though his curiosity is laced with condescension.