Big Love is an HBO television drama about a Utah Fundamentalist Mormon family that practices plural marriage, a type of polygamy. Big Love stars Bill Paxton, Chloë Sevigny, Jeanne Tripplehorn, Ginnifer Goodwin and Harry Dean Stanton. It premiered in the United States on March 12, 2006 following the sixth season premiere of the popular HBO series The Sopranos. The second season began on Monday, June 11, 2007. The show has been renewed for a third season. Canwest Global has announced it will begin airing the show on the Global Television Network, starting with the first season, on February 7, 2008.
The show was co-created by Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer who also serve as executive producers. Olsen and Scheffer spent two and a half years researching the premise of the show, with the intent of creating a fair portrayal of polygamy in America without being judgmental. The series theme song is "God Only Knows" by The Beach Boys; musical score for the series is composed by David Byrne. The score for the first season was composed by Mark Mothersbaugh.
The show's fictional fundamentalist group, the "United Effort Brotherhood", is in some ways similar to and was largely inspired by the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints whose financial and legal wing is called the "United Effort Plan". The FLDS is one of the most prolific and well-known remaining groups of polygamists claiming to be the successors of the original LDS church.
