A subtle satire on polygamy reveals the secret oddness of every family Big Love Channel 5

The opening titles of the American drama Big Love have Bill Paxton as the polygamist Bill Henrickson dining with his three wives on the surface of a distant planet not totally unreminiscent of The Clangers. The question the sequence lodges in the viewer's mind is one often asked: "Which planet are they from?" The series provides the answer: ours.

On paper, HBO dramas often sound like bad ideas. But their execution tends to redeem their high concepts. Who wanted to watch another Mafia saga, until The Sopranos proved to be about masculinity in a confessional age? Which of us did not dread a series set in a funeral home - too obvious, too macabre - but Six Feet Under turned out to be less about Thanatos than the equally treacherous Eros. Similarly, three episodes in, Big Love is not about Mormonism, but about clashes that chime with us all: love v sex, values v materialism, heritage v individualism. It is, in other words, about the perils of the American marriage. Except that this family, one man with three wives, has its perils cubed. That Bill has resorted to Viagra in order to satisfy his spouses is a small symbol of its pumped-up intensity.

The creators, Mark V Olsen and Will Scheffer, make the parallels with more conventional families subtly enough. The set is familiar: backyard and swimming pool, except there are no picket fences between the green, brown and blue houses in which Bill separately accommodates his spouses. When he checks his voicemail he has 16 messages - which is what you would expect from seven children. At the beginning of episode one, we see Bill place a $100 bill on the bedside of a blonde with whom he has spent the night. He is, we soon work out, just giving Nicki, wife number two (Chloë Sevigny in repressed hysteric mode), her housekeeping money. But the suggestion is there: marriage is licensed prostitution.

As with all good dramatic writing, the facts are not laid out but seep into view. Bill, portrayed by Paxton as a man playing at being a regular family guy, has at some point escaped his poor polygamous background and is making it in Salt Lake City as, ironically enough, the owner of a home improvement store. He married his college girlfriend Barb (played, with slightly too much sitcom-savvy, by the luminous Jeanne Tripplehorn), intending it to be a monogamous partnership. They have three children. But Barb gets ill with cancer, and they agree to take on a second wife, Nicki. Margene, the newest spouse, started off as the babysitter and now has two infants by Bill. Played by Ginnifer Goodwin, she is virtually a child herself, albeit one with adult sexual appetites. Judging by the footsie she plays with her husband's eldest boy, Bill may discover that even Viagra is not going to make up for their age gap.

Like distant thunder, there is rumbling at Juniper Creek, the commune of breakaway Mormons to which Bill, Barb, Nicki and Margene belong. We are in My Name Is Earl territory: where wives poison husbands for shooting their dogs and women dress with the Victorian propriety of the granny from The Beverly Hillbillies. The in-laws are, as such, outlaws, and none is further on the wrong side of the law than Nicki's father Roman, the Creek's prophet, violent enforcer of its tithing rules and proud owner of a 14-year-old wife - although young Rhonda is officially on a "pre-marriage placement". He is played (and I really need say no more) by Harry Dean Stanton.

When Bill's urbanised teenage daughter, Sarah, protests at this December and May arrangement, poor Rhonda responds with the devout paradox that "the greatest freedom we have is obedience". When a wife gets out of hand, Bill offers to "lay a blessing on her". Yet the family's faith is not ridiculed - nor, really, are the estimated 40,000 Americans practising multiple marriages. Perhaps this is because, in America, God is rarely mocked - or perhaps it is because the writers have a bigger target in their sights: the rest of America.

If Big Love can resist turning into Desperate Housewives-style farce and keep Stanton from dominating its impressive cast, it may well develop into a subtle, entertaining parable about an acquisitive world in which love is not enough. Its real theme is the secret, hermetic oddness of every family.

I like it, too, because it recalls my favourite limerick: "There was a young man in his prime/ Who married three wives at one time/When asked why the third/He replied: One's absurd/And bigamy, sir, is a crime!"

Andrew Billen is a staff writer for the Times

Pick of the week

Samuel Johnson: the dictionary man
Monday, 9pm, BBC4
Drama doc suggests the great lexicographer had Tourette's (one word that isn't in his dictionary).

Coup!
Friday, 9pm, BBC2
John Fortune comedy drama about a very British coup, albeit set in Equatorial Guinea. Robert Bathurst plays Mark Thatcher.

The West Wing
Friday, 9pm, More4
Unmissable. The one where Leo McGarry dies. A US election night even sadder than November 2004.

Post your comment

Please note: you will need to login or register before you can comment on the website