Photo illustration: by the Cut; Photo: Starz

We get it: There’s an overwhelming amount of TV shows out there right now. The streaming landscape is an impractical maze, and the good stuff is easily lost in the shuffle. But most of us can still find a show that stands out from all the noise. We call it “appointment TV”—or the time you carve out in your busy schedule to watch the show you plan to unwrap with your friends the next day while you’re still thinking about it. Tune in here each month to read what writer Michel Ghanem, aka @Subscribeconsiders it worthy of a detailed look into the group chat.

This year we have covered popular hits such as Shogun And True Detectivecheered on underrated jewels like Great atmosphere And Interview with a vampireand was excited for Chimpanzee crazyThis month we observe Three women on Starz, the long-awaited adaptation of Lisa Taddeo’s nonfiction bestseller starring Shailene Woodley, Betty Gilpin, DeWanda Wise and Gabrielle Creevy.

I haven’t seen so many penises on TV since euphoria‘s second season. Three women pushes the boundaries of on-screen nudity in a way we probably should have expected, considering that Taddeo, who also writes and produces the series, has built her career around a bestselling book about sex. The book on which the series is based was written over eight personally turbulent years while living in a van in a Eat, Pray, Love–esque turning point in her life and career. Originally looking for stories about married men cheating on their wives, she ended up writing about three women having separate affairs and their complex sexual and emotional lives. In the series, the author is played by Shailene Woodley (called Gia here), who anchors the story through some narration and episodes from her perspective.

The ten episodes are dynamically structured in a sometimes non-linear way, switching between multiple storylines and focusing on the perspective of a single woman. 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 reunites with her high school sweetheart; Sloane is a party planner in Rhode Island who is a swinger with her husband (Blair Underwood) and begins to experiment outside of their agreement; and Maggie is a young adult in North Dakota who has begun to work through a relationship she had with her teacher in high school. Three women obviously focuses on sex and desire (hence the penises and the many sex scenes), but it also tells compelling stories about grief, courage, and how compelling the stories we tell ourselves about our lives can be.

Three Women It premieres on Friday, September 13, with individual episodes airing for ten weeks through November 15. The first episode is a general introduction to all four women, followed by subsequent episodes that focus on the individual women. If you’re not totally convinced after the first three episodes, I recommend watching at least until the fourth and fifth to see Maggie 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 familiar with traumatic narratives, having starred in the BAFTA-winning British dramedy In my skin. Gia’s episode, written by Taddeo and her husband Jackson Waite, is something like a Nomadland and lays the foundation for the series by describing the events that led Gia to Lina, the first woman she writes about. The remaining episodes are written by Taddeo and Laura Eason (House of Cards) and sensitively captured by exclusively female directors.

Industry insiders call a series that has encountered obstacles in pre-production, such as the firing of showrunners or script revisions, “development hell.” Some series never escape development hell; stories are often shelved without seeing the light of day. Three women is a case of post-production hell, a recent phenomenon plaguing an industry desperate to cut costs. It was fully completed and scheduled to air on Showtime in 2023 before it was sold to Starz (a move slut had also gone into its second season after Max canceled it – another show that wasn’t afraid of penises). Although it had already aired in Australia earlier this year, Three women is finally coming to North American screens.

It is puzzling why Showtime, the channel that aired the very sexy political historical drama, Fellow travelerswas afraid to ventilate Three womenBut don’t let the delays convince you that the series will be dead from the start – this series is absolutely worth watching. It is a bit reminiscent of Small beautiful things And Mrs Fletchertwo series directed by Kathryn Hahn that explore 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 four leading actresses delivers a strong performance that draws on their strengths: Woodley delivers her best performance since Big little lies; Wise reminds us that Netflix should never have canceled her last polyamorous project, She must have it; and Gilpin plays a character whose self-discovery feels like a precursor to the confident roles she plays in Mrs Davis And GLOW.

Three women stands out in a television landscape that is becoming increasingly hesitant to show sex scenes. Even House of the Dragon seems to have scaled back its sex scenes in the last season, and don’t even get me started on the lack of intimacy The Gilded Age. Although not all sex scenes are the same on Three women — romantic scenes between Maggie and her sexually abusive teacher are obviously disgusting to watch — the show makes a point of showing the freedom, joy, and self-discovery that sex can provide. I would definitely watch another season of it.