Big Love

Bill Henrickson has a successful business and a suburban family life that requires considerable organisation: three wives live in neighbouring houses, sharing responsibilities while trying to keep their arrangement private. Big Love uses that unusual household to examine familiar arguments about fairness, money and who gets to decide.

Bill Paxton makes Bill's confidence persuasive without making it the final word. Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloë Sevigny and Ginnifer Goodwin give the wives different needs and different limits. Much of the interest lies in a domestic conversation that one person believes is settled and another has barely begun.

The series becomes more than a curiosity about an unconventional marriage because the practical details matter. Privacy, work and family loyalty cannot be separated as neatly as Bill would like. Connections to the community he came from add another set of obligations.

It is an ensemble family drama before it is anything else, and rewards time spent with people who can be affectionate and infuriating in the same scene. Six Feet Under is a useful companion for another household whose unusual circumstances expose very ordinary difficulties.