By AMANDA PLATELL, Daily Mail
08:39am 13th June 2006


Bill Henrickson and his three wives have outraged America. Living in a smart part of Salt Lake City in three adjacent houses, Bill shares his love - and his sexual favours - equally among his three spouses.

And now they've arrived here. Last night, the controversial new TV series Big Love aired for the first time in Britain, having weathered a storm of moral indignation in the U.S.

It would appear that not since gay marriage has America seen such a dark threat to the traditional family as contained in this sophisticated and sexually explicit series on polygamy.

In Big Love, Bill Henrickson, a successful businessman, lives the sort of life still practised by between 20,000 and 40,000 Mormons in America where a man has more than one wife, even though that Church outlawed the practice in 1890.

If the idea of the polygamist family model is seductive to men - after all, who wouldn't want the chance of guiltfree sex with three different women? - then Big Love may well change their minds.

Although the religious Right in America have been outraged by the series, perhaps if they stopped to look they would find that far from being a subversive plea for multi-partner marriages, Big Love could well turn out to be the series which finally persuades everyone that the nuclear family is the best possible arrangement.

Bill stays with each of his three wives on a strict 24-hour rota basis - for sex anyway - in the typical American suburb with wide roads and massive 4X4s parked at the end of every drive. The three homes share a back garden and swimming pool.

Bill is handsome, wealthy and well endowed, his wives adore him and he has countless gorgeous children. There is something of Groundhog Day when Bill arrives back from work. "Hi, honey, I'm home," he says, kissing his first wife. He pats a child on the head, passes to the next one and says, you guessed it, "Hi honey", and repeats the ritual.

Answering his mobile phone is a nightmare. He has more suggestive sex messages than David Beckham. At least they're from one of his wives.

And despite some explicit sex scenes with Barb, Nicki and Margene, we get a glimpse of Bill's future when one of his friends arrives with his three wives - all middle-aged and as stout as any members of the Russian women's discus team.

There is deep black humour to the drama, like the scene when the youngest wife, Margene, is having vigorous sex with her Viagra-charged husband and yelping like an injured puppy. The other two wives are incensed.

"She squeals like a tractor trailer," they cry, and run around trying to cover the children's ears. So many kids, so little time.

Never ones to miss an opportunity, it gives them all a good excuse to hit hubby for double glazing on all the houses. The reality of the family set-up quickly reveals itself to be less of a male fantasy and more of a nightmare.

It is all rather reminiscent of the old joke: what's the punishment for bigamy? Two mothers-in-law.

He may have sex with three different and willing women, but whether he enjoys it is questionable. He relies on industrial quantities of Viagra to ensure that he can satisfy them all, and once the sex is over it means three sets of nagging, three sets of bills, three sets of chores and three women constantly telling him he's not up to it.

No wonder he has to rely on the Viagra. It's bad enough when a man can't perform sexually with one woman, but three! Polygamy is not all it's cracked up to be after all. In fact, it's enough to make a man leave home - all three of them.

First wife Barb is a control freak, second wife Nicki a pathological spendaholic and number three Margene an utterly useless young mum heading for anorexia.

Far from showing the sisterly love one would expect of the Mormon mothers "sealed as a family for eternity", the women constantly vie for their husband's attention in and out of bed.

Rapidly, polygamy begins to look rather less like a social model created for men and more like one built for women - at least the kind of women who prefer shopping to sex and want the security of marriage to raise lots of children.

Bill bears the responsibility for providing for his triple-family, has to be lover to three jealous women despite a lot of bad days at the office, has to find quality time for all his children and be a strong male role model into the bargain.

With business pressures growing and finances tight, one wife constantly whingeing about recovering the sofas, another whining about having to support her sisterly spongers, and the third demanding sex then pouting when he won't buy her a car - it's enough to dampen any husband's ardour.

Big Love has had rave reviews in America and record viewing figures. It has rapidly overtaken the hugely successful Mafia family series, The Sopranos, also from the same Home Box Office production company.

But many have condemned it because they fear it breaks our preconceived notions of polygamists - of religious wackos dressed in 19th-century sackcloth and ashes clawing a pitiful existence out of the dirt of the dark, dry hills of Utah, isolated in communities locked in the past, where polygamy is a form of sexual abuse, forced on women for the pleasure and convenience of men.

Until now, the only real insight into a real, living, breathing polygamist family in Britain has been the remarkable story of former rabbi Philip Sharp. But this wasn't slick American TV drama, this was sleazy UK reality TV.

Philip, 46, had a calling from God to become a Hebrew King, so he chose to fulfil the ancient Hebrew patriarchal model and take seven wives.

I've heard of some excuses for unfaithfulness, but that one's up there with George Best.

Phil, who now runs several second-hand shops and a transport business, allowed the cameras in to his home in Sussex to film the result.

He admitted the arrangement provoked mixed feelings.

"I won't deny that part of me thought 'Phwoar!', but the responsibility of this lifetime commitment was very scary," he said. "Every marriage has to be worked on, and it's not easy living in a female-dominated household. We have rows like any other family. The problem is that women can be very emotional."

This was not the "good polygamy" as portrayed at times by Bill and his harem. There was no threat to the moral fabric of society contained within those shabby walls, it was all too unappealing.

The observer was left in no doubt that this was weird territory. The wives all looked like Ukrainian tractor drivers and Philip, well, he was the kind of man who would normally be lucky to attract one wife.

Little wonder, then, that the Sharps failed to make polygamy a must-have 21st-century social model. But critics fear that somehow Big Love makes polygamy respectable, almost desirable.

Having watched the first two episodes, I believe that Big Love does more to destroy the allure of even a "good" polygamist lifestyle than promote it.

Far from presenting a rival model to the nuclear family, Big Love presents a perfect dramatic backdrop for the most dysfunctional family of the century. The Henricksons make the Osbournes look like the kind of people you'd want to go on holiday with.

The outrage over Big Love highlights the hypocrisy in our own society, proudly based around the nuclear family.

As John Prescott's three-year affair so graphically demonstrated, there are many traditional marriages where a husband is servicing two women. Some would argue that polygamy is just a legal term for having affairs.

And the problem for the mistress in our society is that she has no legal rights unless she has a child, no real protection for herself and, as Tracey Temple discovered, is vilified for her actions.

The polygamy lobby would argue that their arrangement offers women greater not less protection, which is more of an argument against being a mistress than for being one wife among many.

Back in Salt Lake City, one is rather left with the feeling that Big Love's critics have missed the point. Watching the hounded Bill Henrickson struggle to keep his manhood and his three wife's spirits up, it becomes almost antipolygamy propaganda.

Far from being a turn-on for polygamy, Big Love is a graphic and powerful argument for the nuclear family.




--- Comments Anyone?? ---

i don't think it would be be shown in pinas... but we have muslim brothers here... i can't see the right or wrong yet...

Never heard of this, pinalabas ba ito sa U.S.?

  i could not imagine, whats the lifestyle,, of the following wives.? anyway.. That man believes " DONT TAKE LIFE SERIUOSLY, YOU CAN NEVER GET OT OFF IT"..for him he enjoy his life and money ..