Watching the ambitious new production, Mrs. America, is like watching a ballgame whose outcome you already know. Your interest will likely be directly proportionate to how you felt about that outcome.

A nine-part miniseries, Mrs. America premieres Wednesday on Hulu, as part of the new FX On Hulu family.

It, essentially, tells how Phyllis Schlafly (Cate Blanchett, top), a conservative activist from Illinois, achieved the long-shot victory of stopping the proposed Equal Rights Amendment in the 1970s.

She didn't stop it by much. To continue the sports analogy, it was a goal-line stand, wherein the ERA had reached the one-yard line and only needed ratification by a couple more states to become embedded in the Constitution.

But it never got them, and Schlafly's success in arguing that this seemingly benign declaration would destroy the traditional American family is widely credited with helping inspire and fuel subsequent conservative movements across a wide spectrum of American political and socio-economic life.

So, Mrs. America is the relatively unusual major TV production that showcases a win for traditionalists.

Creator Dahvi Waller's script neither lionizes nor mocks Schlafly. It paints her as an intelligent woman with strong views and the usual range of human strengths and weaknesses.

That's exactly how it also portrays almost everyone else in this sweeping story, both those who support and those who oppose the ERA.

Even more enticing for TV viewers, both sides are populated with what may be the most impressive cast on television all year.

Schlafly's side includes her husband, Fred (John Slattery), her sister-in-law, Eleanor (Jeanne Tripplehorn), and Phyllis' friend, Alice Macray (Sarah Paulson).

The other side includes Bella Abzug (Margo Martindale), Gloria Steinem (Rose Byrne), Shirley Chisholm (Uzo Aduba), Betty Friedan (Tracey Ullman), and Jill Ruckelshaus (Elizabeth Banks).

While Schlafly gets a bit more spotlight than the rest, this sort of ensemble ensures there will be many memorable scenes along the way.

The first episode, logically enough, sets it all up. The pro-ERA group is riding a wave of overconfidence, noting that the ERA has just sailed through the U.S. Senate, 84-8, and even President Richard Nixon has endorsed it.

When they caucus, and someone mentions that Schlafly has formed a group to lobby against it, Friedan and the others dismiss her as an insignificant nobody.

Schlafly herself, in the beginning, really wants to run for Congress. She has done that twice and been narrowly defeated, but 1970 redistricting has given her Alton, Illinois, area a more Republican tilt.

To make the run, however, she needs her husband's money, and while he's on the same ideological page, he isn't sure he wants to fund another campaign. He's also quite sure that he doesn't want to move to Washington, D.C., which he calls "a lefty Godless swampland," which means that if Phyllis won, she'd be living there alone and breaking up their family.

Mrs. America lets the multiple ironies sit out there without dwelling on them – just as it incidentally notes that when Phyllis wants a credit card, Fred has to sign the application.

While the Schlaflys had six children, Phyllis was hardly without professional employment credentials. She'd written multiple best-selling books, including the Barry Goldwater manifesto A Choice Not An Echo.

But in 1971, most banks wouldn't issue credit to a woman without the security of a man.

In any case, Phyllis decides not to run, but instead to work on a grass-roots movement to stop the ERA.

Her message is simple. Sure, the idea of equal rights sounds good, but in reality, it would mean that women could lose all those valuable special privileges they already have.

They could be drafted into the military. Divorcees might not get alimony. Mainly, she warned, the real agenda of these radical women's libbers was to demean and devalue the millions of women who liked being housewives and who understood that women staying home raising children were the foundation of America.

ERA proponents countered that they had no such agenda, that their goal was simply to codify the principle that women deserved equal pay for equal work, or that they couldn't be denied a job, or credit, or service, because of their gender.

The defeat of the ERA didn't end that debate. Over the years, a number of the ERA's goals have been instituted, at least in theory.

But the discussion goes on, and Mrs. America offers a complex, often insightful roundup of the events and personalities that framed it almost a half-century ago.