When The Handmaid's Tale arrived on our screens in spring 2017, the feeling of a drama perfectly capturing a moment was palpable. With Trump just months into a presidency won via a campaign founded on hate, bile, and arrant misogyny, the idea that parts of America could be no-go zones for women was suddenly less than fanciful. Clad in uniforms fashioned straight out of Salem (the 1692 winter collection), 'gender traitors' in this adaptation of Margaret Atwood's dystopian novel were immediately arrested and punished while the need for a population increase resulted in ritualistic rape by men of privilege and power. All of which was accompanied by a heavy diet of depravity and torture to a soundtrack filled with Kate Bush, Nina Simone, and X-Ray Spex.

Some of the men behind this new world order created in a demented part of the US called Gilead seemed good (Max Minghella's Nick Blaine and Bradley Whitford's Commander Lawrence) while the odd woman behaved barbarically (Ann Dowd's brilliantly chilling Aunt Lydia whose backstory offered a kind-of explanation behind her woman-hating mindset). But in the main, man after man inflicted endless agonies upon many women, in particular Elisabeth Moss' debased but determined June Osborne.

At the start of this fourth season, June is basking briefly in the glory of having airlifted dozens of children to safety into lovely neutral Canada while her tormentors, the Waterfords (Joseph Fiennes' callous Fred and Yvonne Strahovski's conflicted Serena), are on the cusp of facing justice for their crimes. But this being The Handmaid's Tale, joy never lasts very long, and those left behind keep trying to escape Gilead's cruelty and criminality with little hope of success.

With Trump having departed the political stage to leave a kinder US presidency in his destructive wake, the appetite for savage satire couched in patriarchal brutality may not be as strong as it once was. Whatever the problem, this new set of episodes simply don't have the searing impact of its first two seasons. Perhaps the audience is also broken by the relentless violence and hate that was poured onto the screen in this once terrifying warning that totalitarianism might not always be a product of uncivilised and far-off societies.

Channel 4, Sunday 20 June, 9pm.