Holy Matrimony!

HBO'S HIGHLY ANTICIPATED NEW SERIES

They call it "the principle"—the doctrine of plural marriage preached by Mormon prophet Joseph Smith, repudiated by the m church in 1890, practiced in secret by fundamentalist sects ever since, and if HBO has its way, coming soon to a watercooler near you. Big Love, a controversy-courting new series created by Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer, debuts March 12 and stars Bill Paxton as Bill Henrickson, a beleaguered, bed-hopping suburban patriarch frantically balancing his responsibilities as owner of a home-improvement chain with the needs of his three wives: Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloe Sevigny, and Ginnifer Goodwin— the sensible mother hen, scheming spendthrift, and domestically challenged hottie, respectively. The topnotch cast also includes Bruce Dern, Mary Kay Place, and a silkily sinister Harry Dean Stanton as Paxton's father-in-law, the leader of his own radical sect. The program handles its incendiary material with such emotional nuance that, in time, the redstate family's transgressions come to seem almost normal, - AARON GELL