Making Mormon and by pure coincidence, Muslim polygamy acceptable to the masses, Burbank is doing its part. From the Salt Lake Tribune:
PASADENA, Calif. – Imagine a Hollywood meeting where the pitch is ” ‘The Brady Bunch’ times three!” and you see why polygamy has never been the subject of a TV series or movie.
The practice of plural marriage has been featured in just a handful of Z-grade films, from the outrageous 1922 British propaganda short “Trapped by the Mormons,” in which a maniacal polygamist lures unsuspecting girls into forced marriages, to the 2000 comedy “My 5 Wives,” starring Rodney Dangerfield as a man who inherits multiple wives.
But despite its dramatic possibilities, polygamy always has been perceived as too unsavory for a weekly TV series.
Somehow, that all changed two years ago on a Pennsylvania highway. During a drive to New York City, television producers Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer began talking about the storytelling potential of polygamy, eventually deciding to turn it into a new series called “Big Love.”
The hourlong series premieres tonight at 11, after the critically acclaimed mob drama “The Sopranos.”
“Big Love” stars Bill Paxton (“Titanic”) as Bill Henrickson, owner of a home-improvement store and husband of Nicki (Chloe Sevigny), Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin) and Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn), the matriarch of the family of sister-wives…