Shailene Woodley, Betty Gilpin in Starz drama

When you've complained long enough about bloated miniseries that would have worked better as movies, and over-ambitious movies that would have been better fulfilled as miniseries, it's a relief to offer a little new variety: Starz's new 10-hour miniseries Three women would have been better as three movies. Or maybe it would have been better as a three-season anthology series. All I know is that while watching Lisa Taddeo's adaptation of her own acclaimed book, I was rarely so aware that the way a story was presented on screen couldn't be the best way to tell that story.

Three women are, more accurately, three different stories told in less than optimal ways—maybe four, if you include what should have been a framework story, but is presumably given the same meaning throughout due to the “it's my damn book” privilege.

It's a show that's packed—overflowing?—with solid performances, plus one or two great ones, as well as one with serious and valid observations about female agency, female desire, and the power of female storytelling. But despite ample support throughout, Three women only occasionally put together on an episodic level, let alone as a dramatically unified whole.

The three stories:

In Nebraska, Lina (Betty Gilpin) is unhappy because her husband (Sean Meehan's Ed) no longer touches her, comparing kissing to touching wet wool. She dreams of rekindling her affection for her attractive high school flame (Austin Stowell's Aidan), but when she tries to spark an affair, the result isn't quite what she imagined.

On Martha's Vineyard, Sloane (DeWanda Wise) and her husband Richard (Blair Underwood) are successful party planners who keep the spark in their relationship alive through swinging and cuckolding with a careful set of rules. She fantasizes about bypassing those rules for something more permanent with hunky fisherman Will (Blair Redford), but when she tries to spark an affair, the result isn't quite what she imagined.

In North Dakota, waitress Maggie (Gabrielle Creevy) is finally ready to process the trauma inflicted on her by an allegedly inappropriate relationship with a teacher (Mr. Knodel, played by Jason Ralph) when she was a minor and he was 30. That every episode in which Maggie appears must begin with a title card explaining the actual legal outcome of her case against Mr. Knodel is a pretty clear warning that the outcome is not going to be exactly how she imagined.

The frame, which is a kind of story:

In New York City, journalist Gia (Shailene Woodley) is attempting to write a long-promised book about sexuality in contemporary America. After her editor cuts 200,000 words on the subject, Gia is sent to live with respected nonfiction author Gay Talese (James Naughton), who is sexist and a bit gross, but also inspires her to travel in search of stories. Stories like the three above? Yes, Virginia! Stories like her own, which involves a lovable stalker (John Patrick Amedoris Jack)? Apparently!

However, not all of these stories are the same. Lina's story climaxes early, though Gilpin's raw and completely unpredictable delivery is the series' best. Sloane's story climaxes late, though her failure to intelligently address the intersection of gender, class, and race in a consistent way becomes truly frustrating long before that. Maggie's story comes closest to having a beginning, middle, and end, but thanks to the legally mandated caveat at the beginning of each chapter, it lends all of these narratives a note of perspective and subjectivity that the rest of the series refuses to indulge in.

So there are three storylines, each one ebbing and flowing at different speeds and unfolding in jerky spurts. The premiere introduces each woman in a standalone third part. Chapters two through four focus on one woman per episode. Parts six through ten split into sometimes two, sometimes three, and sometimes four storylines, sometimes in long and unbroken arcs, sometimes back and forth like a wacky ensemble dramedy.

I felt like the episodes that stayed the most focused helped develop actual engagement within that hour. But the gap between the second and sixth parts was enough to make me lose my engagement with Lina despite Gilpin's work, and there's no momentum to be found anywhere.

This kind of attention lapse didn't occur in the episodes that cut back and forth between narratives, but the unsuccessful efforts to emphasize literal and thematic connections had the unfortunate effect of making serious dramas feel so much like sitcoms that I mentally renamed one chapter “The Episode Where Everyone Orgasms During Oral Sex” and another “The Gang Disposes of Bloody Sheets Again.” In the recurring images – no show in television history has ever been so pro-condom – and the repeated dialogue is a constant awareness that Three women began life as a book and the things that work on paper don't always work on the screen.

That feeling is made even stronger when Gia appears as a thinly veiled stand-in for Taddeo (she keeps the names of her mother and her future husband, but changes her own). If you didn't know that Gia is standing in for the author and that most of her voiceovers were lifted directly from the book—and if it wasn't likely that she and her narration were present in every incarnation of the script—you might almost believe that test audiences complained that a series featuring only Lina, Sloane, and Maggie was too difficult to follow, and that these coddling elements were added late in post-production in response. Whenever you see Woodley's lion's mane or hear her voice, you know a thematic over-explanation is about to follow.

The directors, all women, starting with Louise ND Friedberg, then Cate Shortland and So Yong Kim for several episodes each, are not to blame for the structural problems. Each hour, especially on its own, is peppered with intimate and poetic moments. Both the season and the episodes feel too long, but giving these moments room to breathe, if only to underscore the importance of women and their voices, is nevertheless a worthy ethos. The same goes for the countless sex scenes, which are staged in a way that turns the male gaze on its head and offers a markedly different take on television eroticism, no matter how fast-paced it is.

Gilpin, who openly displays her feelings and presents a timid smile, red-rimmed eyes and barely contained desires, is the mainstay of the series. The fact that Lina is experiencing a second youth with her past affair is reflected in the youthful immediacy of Maggie; Creevy's portrayal, which never reveals her Welsh roots, is reminiscent of a A crazy Friday/Girls Club – Be careful, they bite!Lindsay Lohan from the movie star era. Lina's openness and outspokenness are intended to contrast with Sloane, whom Wise portrays as someone who maintains an enigmatic and seductive facade that takes a long time to inevitably crumble. In her role as Sloane's friend and potential enemy, Lola Kirke packs a lot of sympathy into her brief screen time.

The men are portrayed as varyingly attentive boners, so aside from Underwood, it's hard to find a memorable actor on this side of the list—though Brian O'Byrne is heartbreaking as Maggie's well-meaning father, and Ravi Patel offers a few funny moments as a doctor who you think is important but mostly isn't.

But you're not watching for the men, and you probably won't keep watching for the stories, which I think were handled more effectively in Taddeo's book. The women are the reason to watch. Three womenand wish they were on a more successful show.