The cast of Big Love

A weekend respite from the grind has provided an opportunity to catch up on some favorite television viewing. Thanks to the miracle of DVR and the monthly cost of subscribing to HBO, we’ve been able to watch all of the missed episodes of Big Love.

If you have not watched the show, you should. It’s another series produced by HBO that we find to be thoughtful, intelligent, and provocative in a way that network television cannot be. From The Sopranos, to Six Feet Under, True Blood, Entourage, John Adams, Rome, In Treatment, and Sex in the City, there has been much to enjoy and appreciate.

And watching a series via a subscription like HBO provides a few small pleasures that don’t, at first, seem apparent. There are no commercials. An hour long program is close to an hour long, uninterrupted. Plot devices are allowed to develop at their own, leisurely, pace, building layers of anticipation or deception, as the writers wish. Characters are given the time and space to develop within those devices; the result is a richer show.

As well, the medium of a subscription frees the show from the odious restrictions of the FCC, in terms of language and, ahem, nudity. Without being gratuitous, most of the HBO series present their characters in a more realistic milieu when they can say and see the things that most of us say and see in our own lives (or wish we could, as the case may be).

This is really good stuff.