Netflix Western leaves behind its female stars

In a vacuum, the logline of Netflix’s latest series “The Abandons” is gangbusters: an old-fashioned oater set in the 1850s, created by Kurt “Sons of Anarchy” Sutter, starring Gillian Anderson and Lena Headey as two mama bears pitting their respective clans against each other in a classic Hatfields versus McCoy scenario. Sutter, after all, loves outlaws almost as much as the innate melodrama of found families clashing against the values ​​of modernity in nature. “Anarchy” was a Western epic with motorcycles, after all, so why not try your hand at horseback riding?

To its credit, “The Abandons” is sometimes accompanied by the same kind of over-the-top hokum that made “Sons of Anarchy” such a deliciously trashy watch. But that kind of pablum can’t sustain itself over even seven short episodes (cut to pieces in a structure that belies Netflix’s own firing of Sutter just weeks before production wrapped), leaving his acting adrift in a dizzying, dull “Deadwood” copycat with half of its nuance and grime charm.

The setting is Angel’s Ridge, Oregon, a one-horse town kept afloat by the mining operations of the aristocratic Van Ness family; its matriarch, Constance (a withering, one-note Anderson) sees profits dwindling and feels an obligation to the town and her family – which includes loyal son Garret (Lucas Till) and daughter Trisha (Aisling Franciosi) – to grow. The best way to do this is Jasper Hollow, whose silver deposits could save the business. The problem is that it’s currently being dealt with by Fiona Nolan (Headey), a spunky and barren Irish farm girl, and the four adopted orphans who serve as her family: Elias Teller (Nick Robinson), his sister Dahlia (Diana Silvers), Albert Mason (Lamar Johnson), and Lilla Belle (Natalia del Riego). Guided by her religious faith and a toughness of mind that has helped her survive so long on the border, Nolan does not want to abandon her home so easily, triggering a cold war between the two clans which quickly turns into disorder.

This back-and-forth between the two clans drives much of the tapestry of the seven episodes of “The Abandons,” which is a bit like “1923” with half the budget and a quarter of the plot. What’s most disturbing about the series is that, for a series with such a robust premise and two intense titans at its center, its tone is remarkably serious. Everyone operates in a sort of solemn register that might work for the high lyrical drama the scripts call for, but don’t lean as much as one might like into the innate silliness of the stakes. The dialogue scenes unfold with a leaden slowness, the action is poorly staged (aside from one or two solid moments and a crazy assault on a farm with a flaming wagon at the end of the season), and the changing lengths of each episode, from an hour to 35 minutes, make the overall pace of the season stumble instead of a trot.

The casting doesn’t do much to elevate the material; the kids themselves fail to elevate the subplots about star-crossed lovers, colonial conflicts, and interfamily tensions, especially Till and Robinson as each family’s favorite sons (it doesn’t help, of course, that each of them has faces that look like they’ve seen an iPhone). The supporting cast is vast for such a short show, and everyone’s tough-guy grunts blend into one another, so you hardly care where a Michiel Huisman ends and a Ryan Hurst begins.

As for Headey and Anderson, they’re clearly the marquee names here, and they do their best to elevate the two-dimensional characters assigned to them. Anderson spends much of his performance purring threats through pursed lips, Joan Collins-style, which is a treat; Headey, for his part, glares from under a tattered hat and gives Fiona the same hell-raising rage that made her so menacing in “Game of Thrones” and, frankly, “Dredd.” The best scenes in the series are when Sutter brings these two together to trade barbs, distilling the myriad negotiations into a bitter turf war between two mama bears desperate to provide for their families.

“The Abandons” mostly feels like a grab-bag of Western tropes, touching on the uneasy peace between white settlers and Native American tribes (Michael Greyeyes acquits himself quite well as the most prominent representative of this tension) and the struggles of recently freed black slaves to carve out a place for themselves in the new America. But it feels like a showcase for the soap opera antics of Headey and Anderson’s brawling, brawling families, which aren’t nearly as interesting.

With Sutter gone and this series clearly cut for a quick release, who knows if “The Abandons” will get a second season. (God knows the rushed season finale sets up a cliffhanger that wonders which, if any, of our protagonists might even still be with us.) But it’s just a shame that nuggets of melodrama and a sumptuous Western production design can’t make up for the feeling that, except for the novelty of its female-led focus, we’ve seen so much of this kind of series before. Its scope is broad, but its depth is shallow.

Sutter once said in an interview that he abandoned the idea for this series, which he had developed before “Sons”, because “Deadwood” had beaten him to it. “There’s this great tradition that Ian Anderson wants to be a great rock guitarist, and he saw Clapton play, and he said, ‘Fuck, I’m going to become the best rock flutist who ever lived.’ And that’s exactly what he did for Jethro Tull. Given this turn of events, it’s hard not to wonder if he was right.

Full season projected for review. Currently streaming on Netflix.