The Abandons TV Review: Gillian Anderson and Lena Headey lead a western that blends Yellowstone and Deadwood

Plot: Washington Territory – 1854. The matriarchs of two very different families — one of wealth and privilege bound by blood, the other a found family of orphans and outcasts bound by love and necessity — find their fates linked by two crimes, an awful secret, a star-crossed love, and a piece of land with silver underneath. The collision echoes the American struggle of the haves and have-nots, in a place just beyond the reach of justice.

Review: Through a twenty-three-year career, Kurt Sutter has written for four television series and just a single film, Southpaw. While that may not seem as lengthy a resume as other producers and showrunners, it helps to know that those series include The Shield, Sons of Anarchy, The Bastard Executioner, and Mayans M.C.. All of those series aired on FX and, except The Bastard Executioner, they lasted for multiple years. After six years. Sutter returns to the small screen with The Abandons, his first project for Netflix. A 19th-century Western, The Abandons features returning faces from Sutter’s prior series and a new historical era to explore, while retaining the blunt-edged dialogue the writer is synonymous with, as well as the brutal violence surrounding a story of family unconventional for shows or films set during the era, but timely to our current world. Led by Game of Thrones star Lena Headey and The X-Files star Gillian Anderson, The Abandons blends all of the dramatics of shows like Yellowstone and Sons of Anarchy within a nineteenth-century setting reminiscent of Deadwood and Hell on Wheels.

The seven-episode first season of The Abandons drops right into the ongoing feud between Constance Van Ness (Gillian Anderson) and Fiona Nolan (Lena Headey), the widowed matriarchs on opposite sides of a burgeoning town in the Pacific Northwest. The Van Ness clan is a wealthy family that has a powerful grasp over their city and the surrounding mines and lucrative land. On the outskirts of the community, controlling property the Van Ness family wants badly, are several families led unofficially by Fiona Nolan, who serves as an adoptive mother to multiple orphaned and outcast young people like Dahlia Teller (Diana Silvers), Albert Mason (Lamar Johnson), and Elias Teller (Nick Robinson). The multicultural mix of races, religions, and backgrounds flies against the conservative times, hence being labeled as those abandoned by their neighbors and banding together. It is the polar opposite of the traditional Van Nesses, something Constance rails against as she seeks to consolidate her family’s legacy in the name of her children, notably sons Willem (Toby Hemingway) and Garret (Lucas Till), as well as daughter Trisha (Aisling Franciosi). Very early in the series, the families are drawn opposite one another when a murder and disappearance occur, setting the stage for the rest of the season.

The world of The Abandons is populated by many familiar actors, including Michael Greyeyes as a trusted lieutenant to Constance, Michel Huisman as mercenary enforcer Mr. Roach, Patton Oswalt as the Mayor, Kurt Sutter’s wife Katey Sagal as the town madame, Sons of Anarchy‘s Ryan Hurst as an ally of the Nolans, and many Sons of Anarchy veterans including Marc Menchaca, Jack Doolan, Michael Ornstein, and Brian F. O’Byrne. The entire cast fills the period setting with an appropriate look of gritty endurance, which is enhanced by the bloody violence and sexual content that drive the era’s kill-or-be-killed mentality. This mentality does not escape the oversight of either Constance or Fiona. Both Gillian Anderson and Lena Headey portray their characters as mothers and women facing the consequences of their influential roles within their families and the community hierarchy. Still, the series does not define them purely by their gender. As a fan of the movie The Quick and the Dead, both actresses channel the same energy that Sharon Stone did in that film, embracing the gender dynamics of the time but never being defined by it.

The Abandons boasts impressive production values as the series was shot on location in Alberta, Canada, just outside of Calgary, and gives the series the rugged appearance of the American Northwest over a hundred years ago. Despite the modern ideas of women in positions of power in a traditionally male-dominated genre of storytelling, The Abandons deals a lot with the tropes of the Western. The good guys and bad guys are aligned with the values commonly seen in the genre, and both Lena Headey and Gillian Anderson play with and defy the stereotypes of the black and white-hat characters in prior Westerns. The Abandons is focused on the matriarchal characters just as much as it is on the relationships between the children of both the Van Ness and Nolan families, as we see some characters developing romantic interests in Romeo & Juliet-like pairings that defy the adversarial balance between their divided families. There are a lot of moments you will see coming a mile away in The Abandons, but that does not detract from the fun in seeing this ensemble play with and opposite one another from chapter to chapter.

The first episode and the finale are directed by Otto Bathurst, with subsequent episodes helmed by Gwyneth Horder-Payton and Stephen Surjik. Creator and executive producer Kurt Sutter wrote the first and final episodes of the season with Emmy Grinwis, Mary Kathryn Nagle, Ron Carlivati, Ryan Quan, Robert Askins, Leon Hendrix III, Sarah McCarron, and Denise Harkavy sharing credits on the remaining five episodes. Director Otto Bathurst and co-executive producer Rob Askins took over as showrunners late in the first season, following Sutter’s departure for undisclosed reasons, which may impact the direction of a potential sophomore season. It is clear by the seventh and final chapter of this season that there is plenty of story left to tell, as the resolution of the events of this season is left in a way that leaves the audience wanting to know what comes next. The creative team behind The Abandons does not make the dangerous time period and setting any less deadly for the ensemble cast, as, just like Sutter’s hit show Sons of Anarchy, any character could be killed off at any time, including the two leads.

I enjoyed this series for the same reasons I have enjoyed each of Kurt Sutter’s earlier projects. The Abandons is a thoroughly fun and engaging blend of soapy melodrama wrapped within the action and violence of the story and its setting. The entire cast is game to play cowboy, and the production values elevate this from being a throwaway attempt to cash in on Taylor Sheridan’s wave of modern Westerns. The Abandons has a great cast of young, talented actors. Still, it works thanks to Gillian Anderson and Lena Headey as intriguing leaders on opposite sides who want the best for their families as well as for themselves. The Abandons sets up an inevitable collision between Constance and Fiona that is worth the wait, even if it takes some overly formulaic paths to reach it. This series is not a revolutionary reinvention of the Western, but it plays within the genre’s sandbox while also delivering our money’s worth. I am here for more of this series as long as Headey and Anderson are at the top of the bill.

The Abandons premieres on December 4th on Netflix.