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The Abandons review – Gillian Anderson’s po-faced western has some very dodgy script moments
Icy mining magnate Gillian Anderson goes head to head with rebellious rancher Lena Headey in a drama that takes itself so very, very seriously
Angel’s Ridge, Washington Territory, 1854. It’s dusty, there’s a saloon bar, there’s horses, an ineffable sense of – I don’t know, let’s call it manifest destiny – about the place, and the only colour settlers have brought with them is sepia. But wait! What’s this? The owner of the local silver mine riding into town? And it’s a woman! In a western?
Yessir, it is. Not only that but she is played by Gillian Anderson (in full ice mode, despite the dust) and is clearly trouble. Not only that, but there is a second woman about to go toe-to-toe with her and do battle for the town’s soul over the eight episodes that comprise The Abandons, the latest venture from Sons of Anarchy’s Kurt Sutter. Its joint lead is Lena Headey as Fiona Nolan, a devout Irish Catholic woman who has gathered a misfit ragtag bunch of motley orphan crew outcasts about her and lives with this patchwork family in Jasper Hollow. Jasper Hollow, alas, is full of silver that Constance Van Ness (the local mine owner, played by Anderson) wishes to bring under her control to placate one of her investors.
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‘The Abandons’ Review: Gillian Anderson and Lena Headey Lead Kurt Sutter’s Disappointingly Slight Netflix Western
Two matriarchs butt heads over the fate of their Washington Territory frontier town in this seven-part drama co-starring Nick Robinson and Aisling Franciosi.
For better and worse, Kurt Sutter is a television creator whom I associate with excess.
From his work writing on The Shield, through Sons of Anarchy and The Bastard Executioner, Sutter dramas have reliably, if not always pleasurably, delivered high dramatic stakes, wild emotional extremes and — once FX removed all pre-existing guardrails and said “Sure, do whatever you want, Kurt” — thoroughly unrestrained running times.
For better and worse, Kurt Sutter is not a television creator whom I associate with insufficiencies. I’ve never watched a Kurt Sutter show and thought, “Man, the language is insufficiently expressive, the violence insufficiently shocking, the characters insufficiently tormented, the themes insufficiently articulated, the episodes insufficiently long.”
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