Television series

Three Girls

Name: Three Girls
Genre: Drama
Released: 2017
Cast: Molly Windsor, Maxine Peake, Lesley Sharp, Paul Kaye, Lisa Riley

Drama
Crime
Very dark

Three Girls retells the true story of three girls caught in Rochdale's 2012 child grooming and trafficking scandal. It's unflinching and urgent, following both victims and the adults who fought to expose the abuse. This is not easy viewing—it's made for people who can sit with real suffering and understand why bearing witness matters.

TVMaze rating

3.9

Should you watch it?

Watch it if you want a clear-eyed, procedural account of how institutions failed a child, built around careful performances and the slow work of people who refused to look away.

Skip it if you need breathing room, since the material is harrowing and unsparing, and you would rather not spend three hours sitting with real suffering.

What it asks of you: Three hour-long episodes that build patiently and hold a sober, unshowy tone, so you have to stay put through discomfort rather than be carried along by pace or release.

Not sure? Find tonight's pick in a minute.

If you liked this

Spotlight2015

Meticulous journalism exposing institutional abuse of children. Like Three Girls, it shows how systemic failures enable predators and how determined people break silence. Powerful without being gratuitous.

But It's a procedural about investigating, not about the victims themselves. The pace is measured and thoughtful rather than visceral.

I Am a Girl2013

Documentary following girls in four countries—Uganda, Kenya, Nepal, India—navigating poverty, education, and exploitation. Affirms human dignity while confronting hard truths. Contextualizes what Three Girls shows locally within a global crisis.

But It covers five different stories, so no single narrative gets as deep. Some find the documentary form less gripping than drama.

She Said2022

Two journalists break the Weinstein silence. Like Three Girls, it's about institutional complicity and the courage required to speak truth. Shows investigative reporting as an act of solidarity with victims.

But More focused on the journalists' perspective than Three Girls—the victims are present but at a remove. Less raw emotionally.

Not sure tonight? Get a pick in a minute, starting from Three Girls

The wildcard

Something you would not have found on your own.

The Girl in the Spider's Web2018

Both grapple with grooming and trafficking, but where Three Girls shows institutional failure, this asks what happens when survivors take power back through unorthodox means.

Stylised thriller about a hacker avenging trafficking victims. It's genre cinema, not documentary truth—visceral and propulsive. But it asks the same question: what do we owe those failed by institutions?

But It's a revenge fantasy, slick and artificial where Three Girls is raw. Some find the tonal shift from documentary realism jarring.

Appropriate Adult2011

True story of an 'appropriate adult' navigating the arrest of a predatory serial killer. Explores how abuse-of-power operates behind institutional closed doors. Quiet, intelligent, genuinely unsettling.

But It's set around interrogation rooms and legal proceedings. Some found the pacing glacial.

Make Room for Daddy1953

True-crime drama set in a hotel over one night, intersecting stories of women in crisis. Structural innovation serves empathy. Captures how systems fail multiple people simultaneously, like Rochdale's failures.

But Non-linear narrative can feel fractured. Some wanted more investigative payoff, less atmosphere.

Flesh and Bone2015

A young woman survives abusive family trauma and enters ballet. Unflinching about trauma's aftermath and the seduction of unhealthy structures. Understands how abuse alters the body and what recovery looks like.

But Dark, slow, sometimes self-punishing to watch. Also cancelled after one season—no resolution.

Baby2018

Italian series about real organised gang predation of schoolgirls in Rome. Grounded, furious, doesn't sentimentalize. Shows structures of exploitation and grooming with brutal clarity.

But In Italian with subtitles. Aestheticizes criminality in ways some find uncomfortable. Controversy around its approach to depicting minors.

The Nightingale2018

Both foreground survival and resilience in systems designed to destroy girls. But this one reverses the gaze—the woman becomes hunter, not hunted.

Australian film set in 1820s Tasmania: an abused woman becomes a man to survive and seek justice. Historical, wildly violent, spare. Asks how trauma shapes agency in a world designed to crush it.

But Extremely brutal. The historical setting distances it from the immediate reality of Three Girls. Deeply bleak.

Mustang2015

Both document girls denied agency and autonomy, but Mustang emphasizes their creativity and joy even within constraint—a different kind of truth about survival.

Five sisters in rural Turkey confined to a house to prepare for arranged marriages. Told as lyrical coming-of-age rather than exploitation drama—joyful, defiant, darkly funny. Shows resistance in a constrained world without sentimentalizing captivity.

But French-Turkish co-production in Turkish. Metaphorical rather than literal about abuse. Its lightness might seem inappropriate to those who need Three Girls' rawness.