Big Love, HBO divorce after next season

HBO will wrap up Big Love, its Emmy- and Golden Globe-nominated television drama about a Mormon family that practises polygamy, after its fifth season, which starts in the new year.

Mark V. Olsen and Will Scheffer, Big Love 's creators, said in a statement Thursday that the show has run its natural course. "While in the writers' room this year shaping our fifth season, we discovered that we were approaching the culmination of the story."

The often controversial series stars Bill Paxton as Bill Henrickson, a Salt Lake City businessman who lives with his three wives — played by Jeanne Tripplehorn, Chloë Sevigny and Ginnifer Goodwin — and nine children in three adjacent suburban homes with a communal backyard. The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints banned polygamy in 1890, and Henrickson would lose his reputation and business if he's found out.

The cast includes Canadian actor Shawn Doyle as Henrickson's brother Joey, who lives in an off-the-grid polygamist community called Juniper Creek.

The series creators promised that the fifth season will be "the most vibrant and satisfying final season of a television series that we can produce." It starts Jan. 16.