Was Three Women Worth Waiting For?

We get it: There’s an overwhelming number of television shows right now. The streaming landscape is an impractical maze, and the good stuff easily gets lost in the shuffle. But most of us can still find one show that cuts through the noise. We call this “appointment viewing” — or the time you carve out in your busy schedule to watch the show you’ll want to unpack the next day with your friends while it’s still on your mind. Tune in here each month to read what writer Michel Ghanem, a.k.a. @tvscholar, deems worthy of a group-chat deep dive.

So far this year, we’ve covered buzzy hits like Shōgun and True Detective, rooted for underrated gems like Big Mood and Interview With the Vampire, and went bananas for Chimp Crazy. This month, we’re watching Three Women on Starz, the long-awaited adaptation of Lisa Taddeo’s best-selling nonfiction book starring Shailene Woodley, Betty Gilpin, DeWanda Wise, and Gabrielle Creevy.

So, there’s a sexy drama series coming out this fall? What’s it all about?

I haven’t seen this many penises on television since Euphoria’s second season. Three Women is pushing the boundaries of onscreen nudity in ways that we probably should have expected, considering Taddeo, who also writes and produces the show, pivoted her career to write a best-selling book about sex. The book upon which the show is based was written over a personally tumultuous eight years for the author as she traveled across the United States in a van in an Eat, Pray, Love–esque turning point in her life and career. She was originally seeking stories of married men who cheat on their wives and she ended up writing about three women engaged in different kinds of affairs and their complex sexual and emotional lives. On the show, the author is played by Shailene Woodley (here named Gia), who anchors the story through some narration and episodes from her perspective.

In a sometimes nonlinear fashion, the ten episodes are dynamically structured, shifting between multiple story lines and focusing on one woman’s perspective. The women in question are Lina (Betty Gilpin), Sloane (DeWanda Wise), and Maggie (Gabrielle Creevy). Lina is a suburban Indiana housewife in a sexless marriage who reconnects with her high-school sweetheart; Sloane is a party planner in Rhode Island who swings with her husband (Blair Underwood) and begins to experiment outside of their arrangement; and Maggie is a young adult in North Dakota who has begun unpacking a relationship she had with her teacher in high school. Three Women is obviously focused on sex and desire, hence the penises and the many sex scenes, but it tells equally compelling stories about grief, courage, and how convincing the narratives we tell ourselves about our lives can be.

Where can I watch it?

Three Women premieres on Friday, September 13, with single episodes airing for ten weeks until November 15. The first episode is a general introduction to all four women, with episodes focused on the individual women that follow. If you’re not totally sold within the first three episodes, I recommend at least getting to the fourth and fifth to see Maggie’s and Gia’s stories unfold. Maggie’s episode is a cathartic look at a survivor confronting her past, anchored by Creevy’s strong performance. The actress is no stranger to traumatic narratives after starring in the BAFTA-winning British dramedy In My Skin. Gia’s episode, written by Taddeo and her husband, Jackson Waite, is something of a writer’s Nomadland and paves the foundation for the series by depicting the events that led Gia to Lina, the first woman she writes about. The rest of the episodes are written between Taddeo and Laura Eason (House of Cards) and captured thoughtfully by all-women directors.

Wait, wasn’t Three Women announced forever ago?

“Development hell” is what television-industry insiders call a show that has faced roadblocks in preproduction, like showrunners getting fired or script overhauls. Some shows never escape development hell; stories are often shelved without seeing the light of day. Three Women is a case of postproduction hell, a newer phenomenon plaguing an industry desperate to cut costs. It had been fully completed and was ready to air on Showtime in 2023 before it was sold to Starz (a move Minx had also made for its second season after being canned by Max — another show that did not fear a penis). Despite already airing in Australia earlier this year, Three Women is finally arriving on North American screens.

It is perplexing why Showtime, the network that aired the very sexy political period drama Fellow Travelers, shied away from airing Three Women. But don’t let the delays convince you it will be dead on arrival — this series is absolutely worth the watch. It feels slightly reminiscent of Tiny Beautiful Things and Mrs. Fletcher, two Kathryn Hahn–led series that examine the emotional and sexual lives of women at a crossroads (Mrs. Fletcher and Three Women share an intimacy coordinator in Claire Warden). Each of the central four actresses deliver strong performances that pull from their strengths: Woodley turns in her best performance since Big Little Lies; Wise reminds us Netflix never should have canceled her last polyamorous project, She’s Gotta Have It; and Gilpin plays a character whose self-discovery feels like a precursor to the confident roles she inhabited in Mrs. Davis and GLOW.

Three Women also stands out in a television landscape that is increasingly hesitant to showcase sex scenes. Even House of the Dragon seems to have dialed back its sex scenes in its latest season, and don’t get me started on the lack of any intimacy at all on The Gilded Age. Although not all sex scenes are created equal on Three Women — romantic scenes between Maggie and her predatory teacher are obviously nauseating to watch — the show is invested in showcasing the freedom, joy, and self-discovery that sex can provide. I would definitely watch another season of that.

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