In the run up to the Emmys, consensus seemed to be that Westworld would sweep the board, which I took as read with a sour kvetchiness, like indigestion of the soul. The Handmaid’s Tale and Westworld are not dissimilar in the broadest ways: dystopian tales of a credible near-future, wrecked by carelessness and male delusions. Westworld even has a little feminist tang, in the shape of some spunky female robots (we can debate robot gendering some other time). But The Handmaid’s Tale is in such a different league: so beautiful to watch that the end of each episode brought a peculiar, near-physical, pain at having to return to the unchoreographed hubbubs and humdrum colours of the regular world. It was so chilling in its plausibility, spoke so forcefully to the night terrors of today’s politics, that there ought to be an Emmy for fortune-telling; for the commissioner who guesses most closely what our anxieties will be, two years’ hence.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Elizabeth Moss with the Emmy awards for outstanding lead actress and outstanding drama series. Photograph: Lucy Nicholson/Reuters

Elisabeth Moss had already, by Mad Men, I think, entered that space that is rare for a male actor and almost unheard of for a female one, where you stop thinking about or even noticing what she looks like, as you dive into her face. And yet the confidence of this drama, the amount of sheer emotional toil they left to her eyes, and the way she met that challenge, so graceful and alive … it was peerless. The woman is simply incredible. As is the director, of the pilot among other episodes, Reed Morano. Jake Polonsky, cinematographer on Billions, remarked of Morano: “She’s an extremely talented film-maker. She shot our season two opener on Billions and brought a great energy and eye to the episode. Coming from a background of cinematography, she has both technical ability and the on-set experience to be a great director.” I guess you would expect a cinematographer to appreciate a cinematography background in a director, but the visual coherence, the sumptuousness, the way that every shot looked like a Vermeer, did put The Handmaid’s Tale in a league of its own.

Margaret Atwood always said of her book that she didn’t see it as a feminist dystopia, as such, since the oppression was more pyramid-shaped, “with the powerful of both sexes at the apex, the men generally outranking the women at the same level; then descending levels of power and status with men and women in each, all the way down to the bottom”. On a related but separate note, the TV series is not feminist: to consider it a type of hell, when one caste of people is routinely mutilated and treated as a “womb on two legs”, is not exactly a radical bid for equality. And yet the sheer dynamic of it, the intensity of Moss’s performance, the complexity of Aunt Lydia’s character, the primacy of female friendship, female solidarity, compassion between women and the abhorrent chill of its absence … God, let’s be even plainer: the fact that this drama was about women, with men mainly in the supporting role of the faceless oppressor, forced the acknowledgment of how rare that is. There’s an all-female comic tradition (from Golden Girls, through Sex and the City to Girls), but in drama, not so much; the tacit uncertainty being, women’s interior lives are all very well, but can they really carry a whole hour?

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Director Reed Morano accepts the Emmy award for outstanding directing for The Handmaid’s Tale. Photograph: Mario Anzuoni/Reuters

If The Handmaid’s Tale hadn’t won all that it did on Sunday, it would have been a travesty, an injustice against Moss, against Morano, against Ann Dowd (who played Aunt Lydia), against everyone else involved in it, against Margaret Atwood, oh, and against all women, regardless of whether or not they watched it. But then it did win – outstanding lead actress, outstanding directing (for Morano’s pilot episode), outstanding drama series, outstanding supporting actress (for Dowd), outstanding writing (for Bruce Miller), outstanding production design, outstanding cinematography (for Colin Wilkinson) and outstanding guest actress, for Alexis Bledel’s haunting performance as Ofglen, whose act of violent defiance unspooled her delicate face in a shot that will live on in the assorted nightmares of all who watched it. It won a lot. It couldn’t have won much more. So that’s OK then.

Nick Lee, the acquired series manager at Channel 4, describes how they lucked out with a show that was so politically relevant. “We acquired the show earlier this year, so were aware of the particular resonance of themes in the show. Whether the original commissioners at Hulu had read those tea leaves or not, the drama is so compelling and the story so powerful that even without the parallels it would still be a standout drama.” Whatever mix of instinct and serendipity produced such a vivid dystopia for such a vividly dystopian time, the shock and originality of that nowness can’t be repeated. But the Handmaid’s Tale has done something exciting for drama as a whole, in making that whole dark-future genre commercially viable. Arguably, given The Hunger Games and Maze Runner, dystopia was already a thing; previously, though, it was a teen-thing, and the Atwood-Moss-Morano axis has made it an adult’s thing. We can now presumably look forward to TV adaptations of We (niche 1920s Russian dystopia by Yevgeny Zamyatin, lots of marching and buildings made of glass for a long-pre-Facebook surveillance fantasy), the Chrysalids (niche British post-nuclear fantasy, telepathy, patriarchy and birth defects, not dissimilar to The Handmaid’s Tale, by John Wyndham) and anything by John Christopher (niche 50s and 60s British dystopian, whose canon is one manmade disaster after another, after which society immediately descends into rape and pillage, mainly rape).

Facebook Twitter Pinterest Ann Dowd, who played Aunt Lydia, won the Emmy award for best supporting actress. Photograph: George Kraychyk/Hulu

And The Handmaid’s Tale has done something invaluable for Hulu, which started life as an S-VOD (a subscription video-on-demand service), jointly backed by Disney, 21st Century Fox and Time Warner. Like Netflix, it diversified into making its own content (which is where the money is made), and, like Netflix, made some low- to zero-impact shows before producing something outstanding. Lee points out that this isn’t unusual. “AMC’s launch of Mad Men 10 years ago proved that new entrants can always be the source of big hits.” A TV exec who wishes to remain anonymous (being in the middle of a delicate deal), explains: “The fact that it was a book made it an easier sell, because the book is a brand. It’s much easier to say, ‘We’re doing The Handmaid’s Tale’ than ‘We’ve got this show about women who are subjugated and get their eyes put out.’” If Hulu were previously seen as arrivistes, “they are massive players now. All you need is one show, and then suddenly, that’s it. It’s like Netflix and House of Cards, the brand of a successful drama is just gold dust.”

Season one’s ending didn’t diverge from Atwood’s book so much as leave out a bit of crucial detail to set up season two, which is already under way. It is a perilous business, taking a book farther than its author did, as we can see from the last season of Game of Thrones, all dragons and not enough sex being the headline complaint, the more sophisticated rendition of which is that the show never managed to breathe the original author’s life into the characters, and it became plot-driven and head-spinning, like a whistle-stop tour of military planning. Whether or not The Handmaid’s Tale: the Sequel suffers the same fate, nobody can know; it’s a risk I’m prepared to take. The end of season one felt like losing a limb.