Cissie Colpitts (Joan Plowright) drowns her cheating husband and in the ensuing cover-up enlists the help of lonely coroner Henry Madgett (Bernard Hill), an old friend with a longstanding weakness for her charms. But when Cissie's daughter (Juliet Stevenson) and granddaughter (Joely Richardson) both decide to resort to the same methods for solving conflicts with their own frustrating husbands, the Colpitts women and their repeated appeals for help begin to wear on Madgett's conscience generations of women all share the same problem: marriage woes, and they want to put an end to it.
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