---
name: "Mark V. Olsen"
canonical: "https://film.one/person/mark-v-olsen"
roles: ["Creator","Writer"]
born: "1 January 1962"
reviewed_on_fi1m: 1
updated: "2026-09-17T00:04:00.179110+00:00"
licence: "© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL."
---

# Mark V. Olsen

Creator and writer. Born 1 January 1962 in United States.

## Details

- **Work:** Creator, Writer
- **Born:** 1 January 1962, United States

## Fi1m on Mark V. Olsen

> Mark V. Olsen writes about households nobody else would run as households. With Will Scheffer he turned a polygamist's three homes into a matter of car payments and Tuesday rotas, and for two seasons it was among the best American television of its period.

Three houses, one back lawn, and a question of who has the husband on a Tuesday. The opening minutes of *Big Love* (2006) decide not to ask whether a Utah polygamist's arrangement is wrong, and everything we know of Mark V. Olsen's writing follows from that decision. He is interested in the running of a household, however strange the household, and he trusts that the bins and the new car will tell us more about the people than any argument would.

He came to it sideways. Olsen was an attorney before he was a writer, which may account for the interest in how arrangements are kept, and he co-produced the independent film *Easter* (2002) before television. Then, with his writing partner Will Scheffer, he created *Big Love* and ran it for five seasons between 2006 and 2011. The idea arrived on a drive back to New York from Nebraska; as he put it, "Mormon polygamy has always been on my radar." The pair followed it with *Getting On* (2013–2015), a comedy-drama set in a geriatric ward, and Olsen went on to write and produce on *The Mosquito Coast* (2021–2023). We have not reviewed the later two and will not judge them, though a ward sounds like his kind of room: people who cannot easily get away from one another.

What works is the refusal to judge, which is harder than it looks. A lesser writer would have used Bill Henrickson's three wives as a case, for or against, and the series would have turned into a debate with furniture. Olsen and Scheffer instead give each wife a house and a grievance and let us do the arithmetic. The lawn unsettled us more than anything said out loud: three front doors, one garden, and the women crossing it in daylight for the neighbours to see. We compared it in our review to *The Sopranos*, which took the Mafia as given and asked how the family got along. This takes plural marriage as given and asks about the traffic.

What works less well is scale. The first two seasons are among the best American television of their period and the later ones sprawl, as if the household had proved so rich that nobody could stop adding rooms to it. That is the risk of Olsen's method. A story built on domestic detail has no natural end, because there is always another bill.

Watch *Big Love* from the beginning, and notice the point at which the houses stop being the subject. That is where Olsen is strongest, and it is a long way in.

## Biography

Mark V. Olsen is an American television writer, producer and attorney. He grew up in Hastings, Nebraska, and is a member of the New York bar.

With his writing partner and husband Will Scheffer, Olsen co-created the HBO series *Big Love* (2006–2011), on which he also served as executive producer and writer. The pair won a Writers Guild of America Award for the pilot episode. They later co-created *Getting On* (2013–2015) for HBO. Olsen has written episodes of *The Mosquito Coast* (2021–2023) and earlier produced the independent film *Easter* (2002).

*Sources: en.wikipedia.org, imdb.com.*

## On Fi1m (1)

- *Big Love* (2006), Fi1m 79, Creator, Teleplay, Writer — [page](https://film.one/tv/big-love.md)

## Also known for

- *The Mosquito Coast* (2021), Writer

---
© Fi1m Ltd. Written by AI under a human editor; checked against sources before publication. Quote with attribution and a link to the canonical URL. Canonical: https://film.one/person/mark-v-olsen