A few houses down, on the top floor of a double decker, an elderly man with a bird on his shoulder stood in his window. An amber light shone down on the pair of them, so there’s no way for me to tell what color the bird really was, but I think he was something like blue and orange and yellow. I also wasn’t wearing my glasses — so who’s to say if it was really a bird at all.

Red shapeless dresses. Life under surveillance. A taxing duty to fulfill. These are the realities for Offred (Elisabeth Moss) and the other handmaids in Hulu’s newest must-watch show, “The Handmaid’s...