Three Women

Based on the bestselling book of the same name, Three Women is a ten-part series that tells the story of everyday small-town women facing their own problems with intimacy and sensuality. There’s Lina (Betty Gilpin) from Indiana, a sexually frustrated housewife whose conservative husband and friends shame her for her desires. There’s Sloane (DeWanda Wise) from Massachusettes, a successful restauranteur judged for her appetite for threesomes. Then there’s young Maggie (Gabrielle Creevy) from North Dakota, who had an affair with her English teacher in high school. Gia—and in effect, the show itself—tries her best to tie a thread between these three stories, but they’re ultimately too uneven to resemble a decent whole. What could’ve been a neat anthology or a seamless multi-part story is a fractured tale with parts that shine way more than the others. In particular, it’s Lina’s story that stands out from the others. Gilpin is convincing and vulnerable as her character, and you feel an immediate protectiveness over her. The showrunners would’ve done well to either use her story as a standalone or flesh out the others with the same direction and depth to make Three Women work. As it stands, it feels too overstuffed and uneven to sit through.

Three women from different walks of life take radical steps to explore their true desires, while struggling to emerge from a prison of expectations. A writer, grieving her own loss, persuades each of them to tell her their stories.