Details

Release year: 2006

Storyline

A Utah polygamist who owns home improvement stores in the Salt Lake City area juggles relationships with three wives while trying to keep his complex family life from becoming a public scandal.

Top credits

Cast

Bill Paxton — Bill Henrickson
Jeanne Tripplehorn — Barb Henrickson
Chloë Sevigny — Nicolette Grant
Ginnifer Goodwin — Margene Heffman

See all 503 credits →

Awards

0 wins & 9 nominations

See all awards →

Did you know

• In an interview shortly after the end of the series, creators Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer clarified that Frank did not commit suicide during the last episode, he only helped Lois do so.

• The show's fictional fundamentalist group, the "United Effort Brotherhood", is similar to, and was largely inspired by, the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, whose financial and legal wing is called the "United Effort Plan". The FLDS is one of the most well-known groups of polygamists claiming to be successors of the original LDS church.

• In season 3, the LDS Church conspires to buy an antique letter from Alby that seems to be damaging to the church, but turns out to be a forgery. It is a reference to the Mark Hofmann "Salamander letter" scandal of the mid-1980s. Hofmann, an ex-Mormon and a talented forger, "discovered" multiple letters and documents purportedly written by Joseph Smith and other founders of the Church of Latter-Day Saints. Some of the documents cast the church or its founders in an unflattering light. The most famous, the so-called "Salamander letter," seemed to prove that when Joseph Smith had the foundational Mormon revelation, instead of being visited by the angel Moroni, he had actually seen a talking salamander. The LDS church was unable to determine if the letter was authentic, and it was sold for $40,000 to a devout Mormon who intended to donate it to the church to hide it. After Mormon critics exposed Hofmann as a forger, and the Salamander letter and his other "discoveries" as fakes, Hofmann became desperate and killed two people, including the man who had purchased the letter. The church was heavily criticized for being unable to determine that Hofmann's works were forgeries. As of December 2010, Hofmann is serving a life sentence at the Utah State Prison in Draper. He was moved to the Central Utah Correctional Facility in Gunnison, Utah, in 2016.