'Marvelous Mrs. Maisel' Strikes a #MeToo Chord

“Because of everything going on, ‘Maisel’ has taken on political overtones that weren’t particularly intended,” says Ms. Sherman-Palladino, who previously created the long-running TV series “Gilmore Girls.” “But to not portray the comedy world the way it is would have been fake storytelling. It was a misogynistic world then, and it is now.”

“Maisel” won two Golden Globes earlier this month, snagging best television comedy and a best actress trophy for

Rachel Brosnahan,

who plays the title character, Miriam “Midge” Maisel. Amazon Studios, which has already ordered a second season, says that over half of U.S. Prime members who finished the eight-episode first season did so within three days, a sign that it caught on with binge-watching audiences.

In a statement,

Marc Resteghini,

a programming executive for Amazon Studios, called the show “a rare pairing of the perfect concept with the most unique of voice,” adding: “

Midge Maisel’s

journey is inspiring, entertaining and timeless—we suspected very early that it would have broad resonance within the culture.”

As Midge, Ms. Brosnahan plays a homemaker enjoying domestic life on New York’s Upper West Side, until her husband leaves her for his secretary. Her first stand-up performance is essentially an accident—she stumbles onstage drunk, trying to make sense of her shattered life. To her surprise, her dark state of mind gets the audience laughing.

“Midge never wondered, ‘Is there another world, another existence for me?’ But she sort of discovers her superpower, that she has this ability to get up on stage and talk and people will find her funny,” says Ms. Sherman-Palladino.

Yet she struggles in an industry that is hostile to women. Agents and bookers take her for a singer, while male comedians think she must be an assistant sent by their competitors to steal their act. Audience members heckle her with sexist jabs. Even her supporters can’t reconcile the idea that an attractive woman could also be funny.

Decades later, women working in comedy say these problems haven’t gone away.

“If a man in our field, whether it be a comedian, agent or booker, only sees you as a sexual object, or in some cases, not as a sexual object, you might automatically be cut off from career growth and opportunity,” says stand-up comic

Sara Schaefer.

“It’s subtle, but it’s very real.”

When she was working in the 1990s, “club owners feared that women wouldn’t bring in an audience,” says

Laurie Kilmartin,

a writer for the late-night TBS series “

Conan.

” “They were afraid of offending male audience members, and I think they didn’t really care about female audience members.”

A 2007 Vanity Fair article by

Christopher Hitchens,

“Why Women Aren’t Funny,” “made it a lot harder for women to get work” in comedy, Ms. Kilmartin adds. “It just sort of gave them justification not to hire us.”

“There’s no way to pretend that comedy is a gracious place, that all they care about is talent,” says Ms. Sherman-Palladino. “You’re already dealing with insecure men, and then on top of that you have women walking into their territory who could be funnier than them.”

This is what riles Midge’s husband, an aspiring comedian who realizes that his wife has more natural talent than he does and, pouring salt in the wound, makes him the butt of her jokes.

“What’s interesting about Midge,” says Ms. Sherman-Palladino, “is that if you asked her if she was a feminist, she’d say, ‘No, I’m married, I have two children, I like to cook brisket.’ And yet, what she’s doing is the ultimate expression of feminism, which is saying what’s on her mind.”

For the second season, “Maisel” will further explore gender dynamics in comedy, including sexism, but also the attempts to combat it decades ago.

Midge’s creative partnership with her manager, played by

Alex Borstein,

will be part of that, Ms. Sherman-Palladino says. “We’ll go deeper into how these two women, coming together, achieve something they could never do by themselves.”