Big Love (2006-2011)

USA

Television Series

Creators: Mark V. Olsen & Will Scheffer

Cast: Bill Paxton, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloë Sevigny, Ginnifer Goodwin, Douglas Smith, Amanda Seyfried, Grace Zabriskie, Matt Ross, Joel McKinnon Miller, Melora Walters, Shawn Doyle, Mary Kay Place, Harry Dean Stanton, Daveigh Chase, Bruce Dern, Mireille Enos

Set in Salt Lake City, Olsen and Scheffer’s consistently entertaining if rather undemanding series follows the ups and downs of a polygamous family who straddle the divide between modern day Mormons and the compound-dwellers who remain stuck in the 19th century.

Season 1 (2006)

With their latest marriage still very fresh, their new homes barely moved into, and the paint on the walls of their second DIY superstore still wet, polygamous Bill, Barb, Nicki, and Marge find plenty of teething troubles to keep them occupied, in this gentle and undemanding yet strangely addictive first season.

Season 2 (2007)

The Hendricksons’ lives become ever more entwined with those of the residents of Juniper creek, as business, political, and family loyalties are twisted and manipulated by Bill (and his enemies) in order to ensure a more secure future for him and his family, in this considerably more ambitiously plotted second season.

Season 3 (2009)

With a bolder use of music and a generally more dramatic tone, this third season – in which potential fourth wives, teenage pregnancies, new business ventures, and high profile court cases compete for screen time – contains both the series-so-far’s most powerful moments and its cheesiest ones too, as it becomes evermore (though not unpleasantly) soap-like.

Season 4 (2010)

Bill decides to run for state senate, consumed with the naïve idea that when he wins his seat he will be able to unveil his polygamy to the public and legitimise it, though his single-mindedness soon begins to take its toll on his large family, in this entertaining fourth season, which generally returns to the tone of the first two seasons, and is benefited greatly by Anton Sanko’s powerful scores.

Season 5 (2011)

With his family’s polygamy now revealed to the world, Bill Henrickson spends much of this relatively disappointing and unbalanced final season gathering new enemies, most of whom he manages to deal with rather too easily and never entirely convincingly, as the series heads towards its somewhat bathetic conclusion, desperately missing the likes of Melora Walters, Shawn Doyle, and Amanda Seyfried. Iain.Stott