Big Love

Never heard of it. Is it American?

HBO, verra funny...

Absolutely, k. About Mormons in Utah! :wink:

(kinda real, too. makes it funnier...)

RH

Maybe it's called something else in the US?

(Seems rather "HBO-ish" to me.)

So I wasn't laughing in the wrong spots,then, RH? (Phew! Ya never can tell for certain! )

I think it is on hiatus, or is done in new form. I don't have premiums anymore, and I rarely travel of late...

RH

Gosh! Look what I just found: It's even go it's own official website!

Here's the lucky (? Sometimes not! :wink: ) fellow & his 3 wives. Boy, are there some power struggles amongst the wives! Momma mia!



http://www.hbo.com/biglove/

Airs Next: HBO at Monday 9:00 PM (60 min.)
Status: Returning Series Premiered: March 12, 2006
Show Category: Drama


As if normal family life isn't enough trouble, Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton, Twister, Thunderbirds) has everything in triple: three wives, three houses, three families. Bill's first and only legal wife is Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn, Word of Honor) but he also shares the bedroom with middle wife Nicki (Chloe Sevigny, Boys Don't Cry, Dogville) and youngest wife Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin, Ed, Mona Lisa Smile). Bill also has three new adjoining houses, seven kids, and a booming hardware business. His closest friend and business partner at Home Plus, Don Embry (Joel McKinnon Miller), is also a polygamist. The series kicks in as Bill receives troublesome news about his father Frank (Bruce Dern, Last Man Standing), who lives in rural Utah in a fundamentalist community lead by Bill's father-in-law, the menacing "Prophet" Roman Grant (Harry Dean Stanton, Wild at Heart, The Green Mile).

Bill's younger brother Joey (Shawn Doyle, The Eleventh Hour) was once a star athlete in the NFL, but is now getting used to living in the compound with his wife Wanda (Melora Walters, Magnolia, The Butterfly Effect). Bill's mother Lois (Grace Zabriskie, Twin Peaks, Fried Green Tomatoes) is a descendant to the original founder of the Juniper Creek compound, and is still bitter for Roman Grant's hostile takeover for the leadership. Daveigh Chase (The Ring, Lilo & Stitch) plays Roman's latest wife, the child-bride Rhonda. Rounding out the cast are Amanda Seyfried (Veronica Mars, As the World Turns) as Bill and Barb's oldest daughter Sarah, Douglas Smith (Citizen Duane) as Ben, the adoring son, and Jolean Wejbe as Tancy, the precocious 8-year-old.

The series is executive produced by creators Mark V. Olsen (Easter) and Will Scheffer (Easter), Oscar-winning actor Tom Hanks, and Gary Goetzman (Band of Brothers, The Polar Express).

Polygamy Loves Company

http://www.tv.com/big-love/show/25834/summary.html

You get the picture?

I've finished watching the whole of series 1.
I think I'm hooked!
It is complex ... an excellent soap with lots of very credible bits & lots of sly, bizarre & funny elements at the same time.
Apparently this was made by the same folk who produced the Sopranos.

Hey msolga.

I'm a Big Love fan too.

Yeah, they used the hook of showing all the typical things someone might wonder about polygamy, such as the keeping 3 women "satisfied" the division of duties, etc. Then, it got into an actual story line about the politics between the family in the mainstream and the separatist community.

The 2nd season gets deeper, has a lot more meat to it. I'm sure you'll love it.

Remind me, what happeed in the last episode you watched?

Ah, another fan. Wonderful, Chai!

The last episode?: Wife no 1 had been nominated as Mother of the Year & becomes one of the three finalists. so there she was, sitting up on the stage looking confident & radiant, her family (minus wife no 2 & wife no 3 - because there weren't enough tickets) sitting in the audience, proud as punch.
Then (UhOh!) she is called to the side an asked if, in fact, she is living in a polygamist relationship. She has been dobbed in! Oh no! She admits she is. The family leave the hall in disgrace after it is announced that she has withdrawn for "personal reasons" .... What a bombshell! :wink:

I've been watching the first three seasons on HBO on Demand. They were so captivating I couldn't turn off the TV last night, overslept on today's afternoon nap, and consequently had to reschedule my date with Roberta this evening. (Sorry, Roberta!) It's that good.


I know, right?


I think it's mainly meant to be real. Like real life, life in this series has funny parts, not-so-funny parts, and downright heartbreaking parts. Because I have neither experienced fundamentalist Mormonism nor read up on it, I can't say if the producers succeeded at making it real. But they certainly made the storylines plausible and coherent. What's more, the script writers managed to juxtapose the disparate elements in a dramatic style I find almost Shakespearean. As a happy aside, that's not at all unusual for an HBO series. I wouldn't be surprised if future art historians categorized the HBO of the 1990s, 2000s, and 2010s as a Golden Age of adult entertainment made for actual adults.


What can I say? This series is pure crack. I'm hooked. I look forward to season 5, resent that it will be the final season, and hate that I'll have to wait four weeks until season 4 comes out on DVD.

What he said.

It's fabulous!!! very true to life I gather, re compound life.

Season 5 is the last? Damn!

Oh well, I have only just started watching Season 3.

They've finally mentioned Mormon undies...and the Temple scene when Barb goes back for a whiff of heaven is hilarious!!!!

Ha, Thomas, you've discovered it!


Yes, I agree with your "real" assessment. (Not that I'm an expert on Mormon marriages, or anything .... wrong country. )
But there is also a healthy, endearing, humorous, "soap opera" quality to Big Love. Which is part of what's kept me hooked. Though I have not seen the last series ... SBS, which has been televising the series here, changed their programming arrangements to a night I couldn't accommodate. So will will have to do the catch-up thing via my DVD hire shop.

I love HBO too!
It almost (but not quite) makes me wish I had cable access. (I just don't watch enough TV to warrant it.)
Last week I finished watching Six Feet Under & I suffered similar addictions to those you describe with Big Love. I think I might have broken some new world record for watching an entire (very long) TV series in the shortest time possible! Loved it.
Madmen was the best thing on TV last year, in my opinion. We still haven't seen the (4th?) series, which you guys just saw. I will buy it the very minute it is released here!
And I think Angels In America (years ago) was in a class of it's own. Just Brilliant.

Anyway, I see I have quite a bit of catching up to do.
Any suggestions, Thomas? Or anyone?
Any other "must see" HBO suggestions?
My contact at the DVD hire place suggests, Dexter, Tumbleweeds (I think that's the correct title?), The Sopranos, ....

Further evidence that you and littlek are Siamese twins joined at some part of your brains. On her Facebook page, she recently reported similar symptoms with Six Feet Under. Though I'm not sure Big Love would be for her. She Never Liked (TM) the American West.

I've always thought k possessed impeccable taste, Thomas.
This just proves it!

here's a whole thread about good HBO shows!!!


http://able2know.org/topic/104831-1