UNIVERSAL CITY, Calif. -- Just a year ago, premium cable channel HBO seemed to be in decline and in danger of falling off the pop culture radar.

"The Sopranos" had ended and the network seemed stuck in a rut of dark, New York-centric shows featuring characters in therapy. That appears to be changing.

HBO will present a new drama with broad appeal -- "The No. 1 Ladies' Detective Agency," based on the book series and premiering March 29 -- and a new Will Ferrell-produced comedy about a former pro baseball player turned high school gym teacher, "Eastbound & Down" (Feb. 15).

In addition, HBO will premiere what looks to be a guaranteed tear-jerker movie: "Taking Chance" (Feb. 21), the story of a retired Marine (Kevin Bacon) who accompanies the body of 19-year-old Lance Cpl. Chance Phelps, killed in Iraq, home to Wyoming.

But the cherry on the sundae of HBO's revival is this weekend's return of the family drama "Big Love" (9 p.m. Sunday). It's easily the best series currently in production for the network even as it tries to draw more viewers who haven't moved beyond the show's "ewww" premise of a polygamous family.

Creators Mark Olsen and Will Scheffer said the show's concept came about while driving from Nebraska back to New York City following a disastrous family Christmas.

"On day two of the drive, just crossing out of West Virginia and the Pennsylvania Turnpike, Will and I were just pitching ideas around, and I literally said, 'Hey, what about a story about polygamy?' " Olsen said.

Scheffer's response: "That's the most disgusting thing I've ever heard in my life. No one's going to want to watch that."

Olsen researched polygamous sects in Utah that broke away from the Mormon Church.

"It was intriguing because it was much more complicated than just sort of a knee-jerk response that most of us have to the 'ick factor,' " Scheffer said.

"What Will didn't appreciate was it's not about polygamy," Olsen said. "It's not about the salacious aspect of it. ... It's always about the family. It's always about the marriage."

The series focuses on suburban Salt Lake City businessman Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton) and his three wives: First wife Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn), perpetually peeved second wife Nicki (Chloe Sevigny) and chipper third wife Margene (Gennifer Goodwin).

"I've grown to admire the character I play greatly," Paxton said. "He's a man after my own heart in terms of what he's taken on to try to keep this family together and to grow his family. ... There's a lot of Bill Henrickson that I'd like to be as Bill Paxton in terms of my own family."

For Sevigny, who plays the clenched, often seething Nicki -- torn between her family with Bill and her sister wives and the family she grew up with on a polygamist compound -- playing the character takes a physical toll.

"She's kind of a whirling dervish," she said. "It can be physically exhausting."

It might seem that in a polygamous relationship the husband has the upper hand, but on "Big Love," the women have become a forceful unit.

"There's also a special province of this show that we call 'wives' world' and it exists below Bill's radar, when he's not around and it's the three of them together," Olsen said. "Within 'wives' world' you can have these rich, rich encounters between these three [women] that goes from two seconds into, 'Nicki, will you please shut up,' and she means it, to an embrace 10 seconds later. It's a rich tapestry of relationship and affection and resentment that we call family."

BBC America's "Life on Mars," remade by ABC, will get a spinoff series with "Ashes to Ashes," premiering on BBC America March 7 at 9 p.m.

Just as "The Bionic Woman" was a distaff spinoff from "The Six Million Dollar Man," "Ashes to Ashes" takes modern-day female cop Alex Drake (Keeley Hawes) and puts her on the receiving end of a bullet. She wakes up in 1981, where she meets Detective Chief Inspector Gene Hunt (Philip Glenister), a "Life on Mars" series regular. She knows him because she has been studying a report about Sam Tyler, the lead character in "Life on Mars."

Like "Life on Mars," "Ashes to Ashes" also takes its title from a David Bowie record.

Fans of the late "Veronica Mars," take note: "Mars" creator Rob Thomas' new Starz series, "Party Down" (10:30 p.m. March 20), features many familiar faces.

"Largely the people in the cast comprise ... people who I have worked with," Thomas acknowledged.

The comedy, about Los Angeles caterers who really want to work in the entertainment business, features "Mars" actors Ken Marino, Adam Scott, Jane Lynch and Ryan Hansen in leading roles. A "Party Down" trailer, which was pretty amusing, also showed "Mars" stars Enrico Colantoni and Ed Begley Jr. as guest stars.

Thomas said Ms. Mars herself, Kristen Bell, may make an appearance.

"Kristen Bell visited the set the other day and wants to do an episode," he said. "She has a gap free at the end [of our shooting schedule], so I think Kristen may appear in the show, which could be really great."

A new 10-episode season of Starz's under-rated "Head Case" returns at 10 p.m. March 20. The comedy series stars Alexandra Wentworth as a Hollywood therapist. ... Bridget Marquardt, one of "The Girls Next Door," hosts the "Wild On"-like "Bridget's Sexiest Beaches" (10 p.m. March 12) for Travel Channel, which is now owned by Cox Communications, corporate parent of Pittsburgh's WPXI.