Three Women Review: Television Adaptation of Bestselling Book Loses its Spark

Three Women has four great women tent-poling its creative efforts: Shailene Woodley, Betty Gilpin, DeWanda Wise, and Gabrielle Creevy. These fine actors headline the new Starz drama, and over the course of 10 episodes, manage to captivate the audience. The script? Not so much. The emotional well may run deep here in creator/showrunner Lisa Taddeo’s adaptation of her 2019 bestselling book of the same namebut the vibe never rises above a midline mark in this translation, making this show about three women exploring female desire more haunting than uplifting.

One can expect a certain amount of brooding and esoteric meandering from a series that showcases several people on separate paths to fully flip their lives upside down and embark upon a more empowered path, but this outing feels slightly off-balance. And you can feel it in several episodes, where its grip on you is still felt, but not at all tight enough. Still, it’s not all too often we get a series featuring such engaging actors. Watching all of them embody their characters and the circumstances they find themselves in does, actually, offer more joy than the execution of the series itself. Combine that with the showrunner’s devotion to the material and Three Women is worth our time, despite ultimately feeling as if the ride could have been smoother.

Different Women, Different Dilemmas

The backstory of Three Women found Lisa Taddeo, a seasoned journalist, devoting about a decade of interacting with many women as she traveled across the country, fully diving into their lives. Three women stood out and in this iteration, Woodley’s Gia is the Taddeo-like character found cozying up to them at different moments in time, hoping to capture their desires, heartbreaks, infatuations, and, in turn, their evolutions. The series leans into how these women approach and experience relationships and sex, hoping, perhaps, to dispel any myths.

Joining Woodley, Gilpin, Wise, and Creevy are Blair Underwood (Longlegs), Jason Ralph, Blair Redford, John Patrick Amedori, and Austin Stowell. The story serves up Lina (Gilpin), a suburban Indiana homemaker who’s one decade into a passionless marriage. Cue: a rapturous affair that rapidly becomes all-consuming, transforming her life. Then there’s Sloane (Wise), a glamorous entrepreneur whose wildly open marriage to Richard (Underwood) pivots when two amorous new strangers crack what seemed to be an unbreakable bond.

Pay attention to Maggie (Creevy). She’s a North Dakota student who accuses her married English teacher of sparking an inappropriate relationship — after the fact. Her storyline holds the timeliest significance in our current era, but it’s struggling writer Gia (Woodley) who, while grieving a family loss, sees something unique about all these women. When each of them agrees to share their personal stories and journeys with Gia, suddenly the writer — and, in turn, the audience — sees deeply into the lives of a kind of everywoman. The stories may be different, but the women share common bonds: expression and emancipation.

Woodly, a fan favorite in the hit TV show Big Little Lies and Divergent films, becomes the fourth woman by default here. Of the women we’re about to experience, her voiceover tells us early on: “What they all had was the audacity to believe that they deserved more.” We’ll bite. But soon enough, the structure of the series loses cohesiveness. Most episodes are devoted to shining light on one woman’s experience. Those that weave multiple storylines into an episodic frame falter. Overall, the series would have benefitted from one streamlined approach to telling the story.

Betty Gilpin Steals the Show

There’s much to love about Betty Gilpinwho went from Glow to Mrs. Davis and won us over. She steals the show in Three Women, bringing to Lina something raw, sometimes desperate, all thoroughly visceral. The character is bound to win over audiences. It recalls Meryl Streep’s tormented Francesca in 1995’s The Bridges of Madison Countyand while Lina exists in the modern world, she can’t shake the antiquated marriage in which she finds herself trapped in.

Lina’s husband hasn’t kissed her in years, and we watch, layer by layer, as her repressed desires finally spring free. Gilpin ignites the screen in this role in a performance that is not just believable but fully mesmerizing. Of the three women featured she stands out.

Changes from the Bestseller

Lisa Taddeo handles each storyline with care. Some things shift, however, from the source material. DeWanda Wise’s character Sloane went from being a white upper-class East Coaster to a wealthy Black woman in command of her entire universe. Or so she thinks. The switch adds a layer of diversity to the cast and even though Wise is fierce and authentic throughoutthe change feels forced. Big plus: it’s great to see Blair Underwood playing opposite Wise as her husband Richard.

Gabrielle Creevy’s Maggie is a conundrum. She’s confused on whether to come forward about the inappropriate relationship she had with a former teacher. The storyline smacks of several other films and television shows we’ve seen many times. True, there’s no expiration date to these types of stories, but there’s also nothing all that new or inventive about how Taddeo tells it here.

Meanwhile, adapting the bestselling comes into question. Hollywood loves to leap into action whenever a massive bestseller is born. Taddeo’s work, dubbed “an astonishing work of literary reportage” by The Atlantic, became a cultural phenomenon. Not all phenoms transition well onto the screen. There’s a certain appeal in keeping the magic on the page. Still, Three Women offers just enough of that magic. Bottom line: We would have trimmed an episode or two and made the entire outing a bit tighter and sharper. Thanks to its strong female leads, the series remains alluring nonetheless. Dive in. Three Women debuts on Starz on September 13. Watch the trailer below.