"Big Love" was really good last season. It's even better this season.

The show about Utah polygamists has developed into one of TV's best dramas. It's engaging, surprising and highly entertaining.(It's also moving to Sundays at 10 p.m. on HBO this week and next. Well, that will be the first run of the season's final two episodes, with repeats throughout the week.)

Weirdly enough, "Big Love" portrays some of the most realistic marriages on TV. Weirdly, of course, because the marriages we've gotten to know so well are Bill (Bill Paxton) and Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn), Bill and Nicki (Chloe Sevigny), and Bill and Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin).

But creators/executive producers Will Scheffer and Mark Olsen and their team have elevated their game — and elevated the show. You never know what's going to happen next.

You might have thought that polygamist leader Roman Grant (Harry Dean Stanton) was the big threat to Bill, and his wives and children. Now it's looking like Roman's son (and Nicki's brother) Alby (Matt Ross) is the one to look out for.

The writers have avoided taking the easy way out. It would have been easy, for example, to make teenage bride-in-waiting Rhonda (Daveigh Chase) a sympathetic victim; it's much more interesting that she's turned out to be a lying back-stabber.

On Sunday, Ellen Burstyn guest stars as Barb's mother. And the season finale on Sunday, Aug. 26, promises some Pioneer Day fireworks.

The best news is that "Big Love" has already been renewed for a third season. Can't wait.

IN OTHER UTAH-RELATED TV news, a gay couple is moving to Wisteria Lane. And one of them went to BYU.

Well, not the "Desperate Housewives" character, but the actor who plays him. Former Cougar Kevin Rahm ("Judging Amy") will play half of the same-sex couple; Tuc Watkins ("One Life to Live") will play his partner. Both roles will be recurring. (In other words, they won't be on every week.)

Rahm also played a gay character in the two-part season premiere of "CSI" that aired last September. His character killed Catherine's father (who had caused the death of his partner), then was shot and killed himself.

Gee, revenge, murder, mayhem — that same sort of thing is always a possibility on Wisteria Lane.

CBS HAS DECIDED to go in a different direction when casting a new actor to replace Mandy Patinkin on "Criminal Minds" — this time, the network is going with someone who doesn't act crazy with alarming frequency.

Joe Mantegna will join the cast in the fifth episode, which would almost be enough to convince me to watch the show. (But probably not. I still don't get the entertainment value in serial killers every week.)