Compound circuits

I didnt quite understand the workings of the compound circuit but here is what I found out.

There is two bulbs wired up in parallel and 1 in series.

When I wired it up at first the bulbs in the parallel circuit were hardly lit and the series bulb glowed bright.
I think this was because the series bulb was wired after the parallel circuit and because the resistance of the parallel was less than that of the series it used all of the voltage to power it leaving very little for the parallel bulbs resulting in them not lighting up.