by Meredith O'Brien

The kick-off of the fall TV season gets all the glory, what with it coinciding with the start of a new school year, new football season, radiant autumn leaves and all of that. But over the past few years, network execs have challenged the traditional TV season formula, opting instead to launch some high-profile programs in January, February and March – considered “mid-season” -- so that the new episodes can be aired consecutively from the season premiere all the way through the season finale in May without interruption.

Here’s a rundown of some of Mommy Tracked’s favorite/eagerly anticipated shows which are slated to start in the “mid-season:”

Sundays

Big Love (Season 4) HBO, 9 p.m. Premieres January 10.

While the show’s premise is insanely patriarchal – a man has multiple wives in order to have lots of kids – Big Love provides a complex look at the three wives and mothers who’re in a polygamist relationship and how they relate to one another and to their shared husband Bill Henrickson (Bill Paxton). The first wife Barb (Jeanne Tripplehorn), mother of two teenagers and one tween, last season was going back to school to get a degree in social work and has been struggling with her love/hate relationship with polygamy. The second wife Nicki (Chloe Sevigny), who grew up on a primitive polygamist compound and dresses like the women you’ve seen in the news, caused a rift within the family last season when they learned that she’d been secretly taking birth control pills for years because she didn’t want to have any more children. The third wife, Margene (Ginnifer Goodwin) was once the family’s babysitter before marrying Bill; after having three babies in quick succession, she’s launched a career of her own.

The fourth season will find the family coping with their husband’s opening of a new casino, Margene’s burgeoning career and worrying about being prosecuted for its polygamist practices. (See our previous Mommy Tracked column on Big Love.)