only god knows

Having got into Big Love from the start and barely missed an episode since, I'm completely hooked, and hook is the operative word. Although the cast is very strong indeed, with Chloe Sevigny and Jeanne Tripplehorn both magnetic, I think it's the superb plotting that has drawn me in.

The dark underbelly of Utah is exploited perfectly by the writers of this series, who do not at any point pretend that the three houses owned by Bill (Bill Paxton) and his three wives, Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn),Nicky (Chloe Sevigny) and Margene (the quite edible Ginnifer Goodwin), are an affordable proposition for any man alive. One of the wives recently suggested that he did not get her garbage disposal unit fixed because he was tight - his son gently suggested another euphemism, but it's clear to any lower middle class viewer they are damn lucky to have a garbage disposal unit at all.

Our disbelief thus agreeably suspended, we are taken up to the compound of the backblocks United Effort Brotherhood, from which the Henricksen family are refugees, enough times to make us realise that these people are haunted by their past. The self-styled prophet of the Brotherhood, Roman Grant (Harry Dean Stanton), could easily qualify for membership of the Mafia, only it's Scripture that binds his deals. The casting of Sevigny as the patriarch's spoilt, overspending favourite daughter is a stroke of pure genius - Nicky is a role made in heaven for the screen mistress of the lowering scowl (and isn't it amazing to see her smile, even to skip for joy, as often as she does in this show.)

At the end of the first episode a brief paragraph alerts us to the fact that there are over 20,000 people in Utah currently living in polygamous relationships. The fancies of a few writers around a table suddenly acquire documentary dimensions.