HBO
“ Best of All Time ” TV lists are now as common as the seasons changing , and they be given to highlight shows from relatively recent history . Old standbys such asTheSopranos , The Wire , Breaking Bad , Mad Men , andDeadwoodmake their almost - default option coming into court on these listing , with the occasional inclusion body of such literary genre fare asBattlestar Galactica . So where does that leaveBig Love , Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer ’s polygamist home dramatic event , which aired on HBO from 2006 - 2011 ?
Its first two seasons aired followingThe Sopranos , andBig Love , similarly , seems to have been dominate in every contemporaneous treatment about the best of early twenty-first - one C TV dramatic event , despite its being a necessary part of any TV aficionado ’s sympathy of that grade . It differs from its contemporaries in vital , interesting ways , but its osseous tissue and stock are made of the same attention to item and perceptiveness of craft that madeBreaking Bad , say , glint . In the geezerhood of the rewatch , when cable TV classics are making inroads among coevals who missed them when they first appeared , where ’s the passion forBig Lovein 2024 ?
HBO
Big Love has all the ingredients of a TV drama classic of the noughties
get going with the ostensibly solid family man with a dark secret : Bill Henrickson ( Bill Paxton ) , proprietor of a Salt Lake City - based chain of mountains of home provision memory board . In the pilot ( aired in 2006 ) , Bill goes about his stage business in his upstanding Mormon community , only to return home – surprisal ! – to three adjacent theater on a block in Sandy , Utah , where his three wives and seven children live as a closet family clustering . ( unrestrained Menrecreates this active beat for beat in its 2007 pilot , as Don Draper , a seemingly freewheeling , bed - hopping singleton about town in Manhattan , bring back at the oddment of a day ’s work to a married woman and small fry in Ossining . )
Sandy has its requisite suspicious neighbor ( like Hank onBreaking Bador Stan onThe Americans ) who are certain not all is well on their block . And is there a patriarchal , devoutly focused crime sept that go its desert town almost unimpeded , à laSons of Anarchy ? stoppage ! Harry Dean Stanton play Roman Grant , father of Bill ’s second wife ( Chloe Sevigny ) . romish is the loss leader of an radical Mormon sect living on a chemical compound in southern Utah , where Bill grew up — until Roman kicked him out onto the street when Bill was 14 . In 2006,Big Lovewas already playing with the dynamic and base that had yet to launch its followers to TV immortality .
What makes Big Love different from other prestige shows
What makesBig Lovesuch a compelling vigil even near two decades after its debut is that the otherness of the Henricksons ’ polygamy is never used in the inspection and repair of spend a penny them detestable . The construct of the antihero had not yet become omnipresent in prestige TV when the show first air , and Scheffer and Olsen ’s avowed finish was to present a portrait of a entirely alien life style with a studied fellow feeling .
This target is often pursue to a fault , but it ’s all bracing in a boob tube standard pressure dominate by ( great ) shows in which there is purposefully almost no one to settle down for – Successionand certain time of year ofFargocome right away to mind . Bill and his circle , particularly his first wife , Barb ( Jeanne Tripplehorn ) , are good people , or are trying to be . Their sympathy lie in with the weak and downtrodden , even when protect those people puts the Henricksons in trauma ’s way . ( OK , so Sevigny ’s Nicki Grant is spectacularly awful , but Sevigny is so wonderful in her malignant selfishness that one make happy in it rather than squirming . ) Bill ’s single - disposed commitment to polygamy , which he calls “ the rule , ” may seem calculated to make you squeamish , but the show shape up at the focal ratio of life , never hotfoot to justify Bill ’s decision to return to a religious life that once traumatized him , nor Barb ’s decision to follow him .
Bill act rashly in business and life in armed service of one-time grudges , but his flaws are those of a person , not a quality – ingrain and not inevitably unjustified , and not there for the purposes of dodge . Through it all , one finds a genuine fellow feeling inculcated by the show ’s cozy , poignantly real domesticity , in maliciousness – or , more interestingly , because – of the fact we ’re watching a beginner and three mothers do the work of the traditional family building block .
The cast is stacked
Amid a group anchor by the late Paxton , so square - jawed and solid , standout fixture let in Bruce Dern , Ginnifer Goodwin , Ellen Burstyn , Philip Baker Hall , Lawrence O’Donnell , Sissy Spacek , and , in early concealment visual aspect , Amanda Seyfriedas Bill ’s eldest daughter and Aaron Paul as her boyfriend . ( The latter ’s pre - Breaking Badturn is further proof thatBig Loveexists as part of a misunderstood prestige TV continuum ; Patrick Fabian , Better Call Saul ’s Howard Hamlin , also joinsBig Lovein time of year 3 . )
The functioning span the spectrum of tonality , from Sevigny ’s calculated , forecast intensity level to Tripplehorn ’s expressive warmheartedness to Grace Zabriskie ’s battyLooney Tunestake on Bill ’s female parent . The centripetal factor is that the supporting players is uniformly brilliant .
Writing that takes its time
The show ’s prescience and synthesis reaches its apotheosis in the season three episodeCome , Ye Saints , named theBest Television Episode of 2009 by Entertainment Weeklyand one of the100 undecomposed television installment of all time by TV Guide . In the track of a Henrickson cross - country sept journey through Mormon diachronic sites , togs recollect to have been abandoned are unearth and pay off , emotional Albigenses are reached , and the show ’s deep complex relationship with God as an actual , present name is plumbed .
All of these matter are only potential becauseBig Loveputs in the clip beforehand , allowing its narrative to boost naturally and naturalistically , creating a story that knell all the truer in the context of the imitators and successors that have aired since .
All five time of year ofBig Loveare streaming onMax .
