Three Wives, One Husband is a new lid-lifting Channel Four documentary which introduces us to the descendants of The Rock founder Bob Foster, and 4 different Mormon families. Apart from plural marriage and the bearing of many youngsters, one key belief of fundamentalist Mormons is that the “end of days” will come and that there will likely be three and a part years of chaos. Hence all of the aforementioned pickles.

The footage in the first episode of the four-part collection is incredibly intimate. We meet the Fosters: the family of Enoch, Bob’s son. The cameras catch it all: the home-birth of Enoch’s seventeenth baby, the baptism of a number of of his kids, and the inevitable tensions between his wives Katrina and Lilian.

The Foster clan

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Executive producer of the series Will Anderson explains that cameras were present at the domestic beginning because Enoch Foster used to be courting a third spouse, and inviting her to witness it acted as a kind of metaphor for how Mormons invite possible wives into their circle of relatives. “That perceived to us relatively laborious to get your head round for people who do not are living in a polygamous community,” says Anderson, “however they invited Lydia so she could believe how Enoch can be as a husband when she used to be having a child… there used to be a robust editorial explanation why for us to want to movie it to provide an explanation for that time.”

To acquire the agree with of The Rock citizens, the film team visited them three instances sooner than filming there for a year. They approached the households at a per thirty days council assembly, Anderson explains, and got get admission to to 5 different households with the unanimous consent of the complete community.

Three Wives, One Husband diverts from the stereotype that fundamentalist Mormons are a cult, and is pioneering in the approach that it sympathises with a community who get a lot of flack from the media. Anderson explains that for children who develop up at The Rock, polygamy is some extent of discussion once they start dating: it's not a necessary lifestyle selection, however an choice. “I think in actuality that there's no drive to hold on [with the apply],” he says, declaring that of Bob’s thirty-odd children, no longer all of them are polygamous, straight, or even religious. “It’s now not culty like that, I didn’t really feel. It's now not like you must live this manner of lifestyles.”

Lilian Foster

Not simplest does the documentary become independent from from the Mormons-as-cult stereotype, it explores, with an open thoughts, an alternative to the monogamous society that many of us are living in. “It’s no longer like our machine is so best possible,” says Anderson, “The divorce charge is upper than ever sooner than, other folks have affairs left proper and centre… It’s clear to me that monogamy isn't essentially the perfect manner of arranging a society.

“What I’m interested by is that this choice model. Part of the explanation why we adore the folks at The Rock is because in virtually each and every wrong way they’re beautiful normal and relatable: they do unusual jobs, they watch the similar varieties of programmes on small screen television as we do, they concentrate to the same sort of music. They're not excessive characters, they have got just chosen to organise themselves in a different way.”

While The Rock residents may be tuned into popular culture, they do are living in the heart of nowhere. How integrated can they in point of fact be? Anderson explains that many of the Mormon husbands and other halves work in Moab, the nearest the town. They do the mail direction and deliver submit, one of them has a tiling business, one of the better halves works in a bank and every other is training to be a nurse in the local clinic. In terms of the kids, about half are trained at the local state college, the other half are home-schooled. Utah is a very Mormon state so whilst the Moab locals may not be fundamentalists, “it isn't quite as atypical for folks there as it is for us over right here”.

An aerial view of Hatch Rock, domestic to Rockland Ranch in Utah, from Google Earth

Indeed, it sort of feels that it’s slightly simple to become used to the Mormon manner of existence. Anderson reveals that three folks in the crew – himself incorporated – determined to have a baby while they have been in the market filming, “in part since you’re surrounded through these superb families and you do reasonably really feel like you're lacking out”. He says that the The Rock residents found it “extraordinary” that such a lot of of the workforce were of their thirties and either didn’t have children or had very small families.

Watching the documentary, even though, it's exhausting to not wonder why the other halves put themselves thru the polygamist existence. They to find it, unsurprisingly, very tough to look at their husbands fall in love with any individual else, and at one level one of them admits that “the first 12 months used to be hell for all of us”. But Anderson says that the wives don’t actually question why they don’t have several husbands, in part because of their religion and likewise because of practicality. “[With polygamy] you'll have very big households because you'll be able to impregnate the other halves in turn,” Anderson says, “That's effectively what they do, as a result of you'll be able to have one wife that’s pregnant and there may be some other who is there to look after the young children. In opposite it doesn’t have reproductive price.”

Three Wives, One Husband is breaking the mould in that it seeks to grasp polygamy, relatively than send in the pitchforks. It is for sure an uncomfortable watch every now and then – but at the identical time extraordinarily engrossing and oddly uplifting.

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Three Wives, One Husband begins this night at 9pm on Channel 4

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