Alias Grace review – a blessed adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s extraordinary novel
This cerebral true-crime miniseries, brilliantly adapted by Sarah Polley, is just as well done – and..
This cerebral true-crime miniseries, brilliantly adapted by Sarah Polley, is just as well done – and just as suited to our times – as The Handmaid’s Tale
On Netflix, Alias Grace is tagged “cerebral”. That is part promise, part warning, according to taste, but cerebral this adaptation of Margaret Atwood’s extraordinary, slippery, sinuous 1996 novel certainly is.
The plot is based on a real Canadian murder case. In 1843, 16-year-old Irish immigrant Grace Marks and James McDermott, her fellow servant in the household of Thomas Kinnear, were convicted of murdering Kinnear and his housekeeper-lover Nancy Montgomery. McDermott was hanged and Marks was sentenced to life imprisonment.
