--- title: "Big Love" year: 2006 kind: "series" canonical: "https://film.one/tv/big-love" fi1m_score: 79 critics_score: 76 critics_reviews: 6 published: "2026-09-17T00:03:34.661915+00:00" updated: "2026-09-17T00:03:35.314401+00:00" region: "US" 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." --- # Big Love (2006) Created by Will Scheffer, Mark V. Olsen · 1h 00m · MPA TV-MA · Drama **Fi1m score: 79** · Critics 76 from 6 reviews *In a sentence:* Three houses, one husband, one rota, and everyone in it is tired > Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer’s drama about a Utah polygamist and his three wives is funny, uneasy and better acted than its premise deserved. The first two seasons are among the best American television of their period; the later ones sprawl. ## Synopsis Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton) runs a chain of home-improvement stores in the suburbs of Salt Lake City and lives, in secret, with three wives. Barbara (Jeanne Tripplehorn), Nicolette (Chloë Sevigny) and Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin) each have a house of their own; the three back doors open on to the same lawn, and Bill’s nights are divided between them by a rota on the kitchen wall. His teenage children, Sarah (Amanda Seyfried) and Ben (Douglas Smith), keep the secret from their schoolfriends. Bill grew up on the Juniper Creek compound, where the prophet Roman Grant (Harry Dean Stanton), Nicolette’s father, still lives and still expects a cut of Bill’s business. The neighbours are starting to count the cars in the drive. ## Review Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton) owns home-improvement stores outside Salt Lake City and has three wives in three houses that share a back lawn. Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer’s series does not stop to ask whether this is wrong. It takes the arrangement as given, much as [*The Sopranos*](https://film.one/tv/the-sopranos) took the Mafia as given, and asks instead how the bins get put out. Who has Bill on a Tuesday. Who pays for the new car. What the neighbours make of the traffic. That decision, made in the opening minutes of the pilot, is what makes *Big Love* work, and it holds for longer than we expected. The wives are the reason to watch. Jeanne Tripplehorn’s Barbara was married to Bill alone for years before the others arrived, and she plays a woman who agreed to something on principle and has been quietly paying for it since. Chloë Sevigny’s Nicolette was raised on the compound, wears the long skirts and plaits to the supermarket, and treats the other two as rivals in a competition only she is scoring; she is the funniest thing in the series and the saddest. Ginnifer Goodwin plays Margene, the youngest, as a girl who has married a whole family and cannot believe her luck, and then slowly starts to read the small print. Put the three of them at one kitchen table dividing the month’s money and you have a scene no other programme could give you. Bill is the still centre, and Paxton plays him square, sincere and slightly baffled by his own life. Some critics have found him bland. We think that is the point: he is a man who believes he is doing right by everyone and cannot understand why everyone is so cross. Amanda Seyfried, as his daughter Sarah, gets the outsider’s view, a teenager who can see the arrangement as her schoolfriends would see it, and she does a great deal with looks across a dinner table. Harry Dean Stanton’s Roman Grant frightened us more than we were ready for, and it is because he never raises his voice. He is an old man in a cardigan who calls Bill “son” and talks about money as though it were scripture. The compound scenes, dust and prairie dresses and girls of fourteen being looked over for marriage, are where the series remembers what this way of life costs and who pays. Grace Zabriskie and Bruce Dern, as Bill’s parents Lois and Frank, live out there in a marriage that has curdled into a feud, and they play it as farce with something nasty underneath. Zabriskie in particular can make a line about a casserole sound like a threat. The directors rotate, and include Rodrigo García, Mary Harron, Alan Taylor and Charles McDougall, but the look stays put: beige kitchens in flat daylight, the three back doors on to the same grass, the compound in long shadow. The opening titles, the family skating in a circle on a frozen lake to the Beach Boys’ *God Only Knows*, set the tone in a minute and a half. Sincere, faintly absurd, and the ice is thinner than it looks. What got at us was the fairness. Watching Barbara, Nicolette and Margene negotiate the calendar, trade nights, settle who gets the anniversary, we found we were moved by how hard they work at it, and then uncomfortable about being moved, because the thing they are working so hard to make fair is the sharing of one man’s attention between three women. The series wants both reactions and it gets them, and it does not tell you which one to keep. It does not hold its shape. The third season is delayed and shorter, the fourth crams nine episodes with more plot than the first two seasons combined, and Bill acquires ambitions beyond the store that we will not describe. By the fifth season the family is fighting on so many fronts that the kitchen table, where the series was best, hardly gets a look in. The wives survive this. The plotting does not always. Start with the pilot and stay for the first two seasons without reservation. After that, keep going for Sevigny, Tripplehorn, Goodwin and Stanton, and forgive the rest. It is a 15 certificate, and the compound scenes are the reason. *Fi1m score 79, published 17 September 2026.* ### Reviews we read (6) - **The AV Club**, Donna Bowman (A-): The series examines how polygamists live in the middle of Salt Lake City suburbs rather than debating whether they are living right, making a case that fundamentalism exists in uneasy truce with American mass culture. Bill Paxton is perfectly cast as the square-jawed husband juggling his big-box store job and three wives. [Read](https://www.avclub.com/big-love-the-complete-first-season-1798202142) - **The Guardian**, Nancy Banks-Smith (80/100, inferred): The critic finds the HBO series funny, creepy and beautifully done, highlighting its portrayal of a polygamist family's suburban life with strong performances from Bill Paxton and Harry Dean Stanton. [Read](https://www.theguardian.com/media/2006/jun/13/broadcasting.tvandradio) - **The Hollywood Reporter** (70/100, inferred): The critic praises the return of the HBO series after a long hiatus, noting how it has moved beyond its initial gimmick to become a rich, character-driven family drama with genuine quality. The exceptional cast and natural humor are singled out for praise amid the complex family and external dynamics. [Read](https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/movies/movie-reviews/tv-review-big-love-92751/) - **The Times**, Stephen Armstrong (70/100, inferred): The piece presents the HBO drama as a compelling blend of family dynamics and controversy, praising the cast including Chloë Sevigny and noting its strong ratings and appeal to a broad audience. [Read](https://www.thetimes.com/culture/tv-radio/article/do-you-take-these-women-psbbttnhbr6) - **Variety**, Brian Lowry (70/100, inferred): The critic praises HBO's captivating new drama for launching directly into the story of a polygamist and his three wives without exposition, treating their life as an ordinary family with added complications. The bold approach and strong cast should give the series broad appeal beyond typical pay-TV audiences. [Read](https://variety.com/2006/film/awards/big-love-5-1200517919/) - **Paste**, Whitney Friedlander (80/100, inferred): The retrospective praises the series as an awards darling from HBO's prestige era that launched notable careers and offered a relatable take on marriage and family dynamics despite its polygamy premise. It singles out the wives' character arcs and empowerment as the standout element, noting their growth into independent figures amid the family's challenges. [Read](https://www.pastemagazine.com/tv/big-love/big-love-hbo) ## Details - **Created by:** Will Scheffer, Mark V. Olsen - **Creator:** Will Scheffer, Mark V. Olsen - **Director:** David Petrarca, Dan Attias, Adam Davidson, Jim McKay, David Knoller, Julian Farino, Michael Lehmann, Charles McDougall, Alan Poul, Michael Spiller, Mary Harron, Steve Shill, Tom Vaughan, Sarah Pia Anderson, Julie Anne Robinson, Alan Taylor, Rodrigo García, Daniel Minahan, John Strickland - **Writer:** Mark V. Olsen, Dustin Lance Black, Will Scheffer, Paul Redford, Victoria Morrow, Alexa Junge, David Manson, Julia Cho - **Story:** Jill Sprecher, Karen Sprecher - **Teleplay:** Mark V. Olsen, Will Scheffer, Jill Sprecher, Karen Sprecher - **Producer:** Bernadette Caulfield, Peter Friedlander, Jill Sprecher - **Cast:** Bill Paxton as Bill Henrickson; Jeanne Tripplehorn as Barbara Henrickson; Chloë Sevigny as Nicolette Grant; Ginnifer Goodwin as Margene Heffman; Amanda Seyfried as Sarah Henrickson; Grace Zabriskie as Lois Henrickson; Joel McKinnon Miller as Don Embry; Daveigh Chase as Rhonda Volmer - **Runtime:** 1h 00m - **Certificate (MPA):** TV-MA - **Release (the US):** 12 March 2006 - **Genres:** Drama ## Where to watch in the US - HBO Max: streaming - The Roku Channel: add-on, hd - Hulu: add-on, hd - Amazon Prime Video: add-on - Amazon Prime Video: buy $17.99, hd *Checked 2026-09-16.* Also available in: AR, AT, AU, BE, BG, BR, CA, CH, CL, CO, CZ, DE, DK, EC, EE, ES, FI, FR, GB, HK, HR, HU, ID, IE, IL, IN, IS, IT, LT, MX, MY, NL, NO, NZ, PA, PE, PH, PL, PT, RO, RS, SE, SG, SI, TH, TR, US. Add `?region=XX` to this URL for another country. ## If you liked this - *Six Feet Under* (2001), Fi1m 86: Another family business with too many secrets, made with the same patience for the ordinary. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/tv/six-feet-under.md) - *The Americans* (2013): A marriage that is also a cover story, and the cover keeps slipping. - *Shtisel* (2013): Jerusalem’s ultra-Orthodox drawn from the inside, with the same refusal to gawp. - *Martha Marcy May Marlene* (2011), Fi1m 84: What it looks like to leave a compound and find it has come with you. — [Fi1m page](https://film.one/film/martha-marcy-may-marlene.md) - *Scenes from a Marriage* (1973): Bergman on one husband and one wife, which turns out to be plenty. --- © 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/tv/big-love