Big Love
The best season yet for TV's best-acted drama. The hook that gets you in the door of this series is polygamy: the Henricksons' efforts to live as man and wife and wife and wife in Salt Lake City, and the fascinating subculture of the dangerous religious compound that Bill (Bill Paxton) escaped. But really, the show is about community: Can this strange — but strangely functional — family exist as its own unit, not fully contained by either secular society, mainstream Mormonism or Bill's fundamentalist roots? This season tested these bonds for each character, as the family attempted to bring in a new wife, a daughter found herself pregnant, Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn) had her faith tested, and things at the compound went violently askew. Season 4 returns in January; consider me committed.
(HBO)