Three Women

Long before 'Three Sisters'
by Anton Chekov was first staged, 1901,
the intrigues that happen between three women
-particularly sisters living in provincial towns,
as they plot their escape from surrounds them, 
has been been a staple of stage and life.

The format has had many 20th century updates
each time it has reappeared in each new media, 
film, radio, then television, then back to print
where it has always started off, in scripts.

Each newer version has been more feminist
and has had to explain better the absent male.
Never more so than in my favourite update,
the 1980s radio situation comedy 'After Henry',
where the formula was perfected, the male
appears only in the title, him being survived
by a daughter, wife, and widowed mother in law,
in a house big enough for each of them
to have their own door, their own space,
but they can't live apart from each other.

The series has one man they all like
but he is gay and runs a book shop,
and has a partner who the listener
hears a lot about, but never meets.

Listen to the first series, of four, here.