Polygamy with Porter is plain dull
 THE POLYGAMIST'S WIFE (C4) CHAMPIONS LEAGUE (RTE2)
 
By Pat Stacey
Evening Herald - Dublin, Ireland
Dawn Porter

Polygamy ... phwoar! That's the life, eh? Well, actually, it's not. According to The Polygamist's Wife, it's not just creepy and illegal but dull, too.

This was the last of four documentaries in which Dawn Porter, who's flirty, doe-eyed and dozy, and fancies herself nearly as much as the male audience does, looks at the extremes some women go to to find love and companionship.

A child abuse scandal had broken in Texas and was all over the news. Police had raided a fundamentalist Mormon compound and removed 400 children, amid allegations that middle-aged men were deflowering girls as young as 13.

Dawn visited a different polygamist compound, a dusty town called Centennial Park in the Arizona desert. Breakaway Mormons, set up camp there to get away from the eyes of the world.

"I couldn't have chosen a worse moment to get into a Mormon compound," said a nervous Dawn as she prepared to face a 20-minute interrogation from a council of women who would decide whether or not to let her enter their community.

She easily passed the test, probably because she projects an air of shallow, vapid, unthreatening ditziness, which I suspect is probably real. She's more Louis Vuitton than Louis Theroux.

"Look at you, you're as cute as a button!" gushed a senior Mormon, practically pinching her on the cheek. Cute as a button Dawn may be, but she's also as irritating as a jammed zip and has a tendency to blurt out whatever banal half-thought is rattling around in her head.

She was billeted in a household with three wives and 20 children. The husband, Boyd, who's in his 60s, refused to be interviewed, as did all of the men in Centennial Park.

Dawn met Boyd's second and third wives, Nancy and Ruth, but came up against an impenetrable wall of creepy but meaningless Mormon-speak. "Our goal is to perfect our character," Nancy told her blankly, "to be more like God."

Boyd's first wife, Diane, stayed out of the frame until near the end. She and Boyd were married for 17 years before Nancy entered the picture. Surely she'd have a unique view of the situation?

Nope. Dawn asked her if, given the chance, she'd do it all over again. Yes, said Diane, only this time she'd like to be the fifth wife.

What the film really needed wasn't a polygamist's wife but a polygamist husband. Dawn journeyed further into the desert and found one, "a dirt-poor construction worker" who lives, by the look of it fairly joylessly, in a shabby trailer with his two wives and their eight children.

Dawn didn't learn much here, either, and departed with the impression that polygamists are "properly nuts!" They are, Dawn, they are. And you, cute button, are a pain in the nuts.

Football fans are monogamous. You pick a team and you stick with it for life (I did go to school with a chap who supported Manchester United but switched to Liverpool when United went on the skids in the 70s -- love cheat!).

It's hard not to be completely faithful to RTE's Champions League coverage, which continues to be the smartest in the game. Bill O'Herlihy used the word "vignette" during analysis of Manchester United's 3-0 hammering of Celtic. You won't get classy passing like that from the goons at ITV!
 
Herald.ie
Originally published Wednesday October 22 2008
 
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