Netflix’s ‘The Abandons’ Stars Gillian Anderson and Lena Headey in a Half-Hearted, Oddly Thin Revisionist Western: TV Review

It’s so common these days for TV shows to bloat themselves beyond all reason — more than three years later, I think I’m still watching the Season 4 finale of “Stranger Things” — that it feels ungrateful to complain about the opposite problem. But then you get a series like “The Abandons,” the Netflix Western that feels strangely thin and compressed, especially when held up against its epic, sweeping scenery. (“The Abandons” is set in 19th-century Washington and was shot in Alberta.) Even without knowing the production’s chaotic backstory, in which creator Kurt Sutter left the show before filming had even wrapped, and a reported 10-episode order winnowed down first to eight and then just seven, something already feels amiss. With episodes that often run closer to 30 minutes than 60, an under-developed premise and a finale that ends the season so abruptly I had to double check there weren’t more chapters on the way, “The Abandons” is a frustrating, incomplete take on a compelling premise. The title refers to its underserved protagonists in more ways than one.

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“The Abandons” is centered on the rivalry between widowed mining mogul Constance Van Ness (Gillian Anderson) and devout Irishwoman Fiona Nolan (Lena Headey), the matriarch of an adopted clan whose land Constance covets. There are echoes of “Deadwood” in how Constance claims to be an advocate for the entire fictional town of Angel’s Ridge, not just her own interests — down to the invocation of a real-life robber baron, this time Cornelius Vanderbilt in lieu of George Hearst, as her investor. But per Sutter’s tastes, the “Sons of Anarchy” creator is more interested in blood feuds and family than the gradual path from frontier to civilization. Tensions are already high between the two groups, with Constance’s men terrorizing Fiona’s cattle while the town sheriff looks the other way. When the elder Van Ness son, a violent sociopath, corners Fiona’s de facto daughter Dahlia (Diana Silvers), a violent confrontation ensues and the conflict kicks into overdrive.

Ostensibly, “The Abandons” refers to Fiona’s ragtag crew, who reside in the small, potentially silver-rich community of Jasper’s Hollow alongside a handful of fellow outcasts. Fiona raised Dahlia and her brother Elias (Nick Robinson) as their nanny, then took over their father’s land with the siblings after he passed away. The trio connected with Albert (Lamar Johnson), the son of a Black schoolteacher, and Native girl Lilla Belle (Natalia del Riego) on the way out West, yet the exact origins of the group’s tight and socially anomalous bond go largely unexplained. Albert gets a spotlight episode, but it feels like the stubbornly mysterious Lilla is missing one; Elias gets a cookie cutter Romeo-and-Juliet storyline with Constance’s daughter Trisha (Aisling Franciosi), whose piano skills signal her erudition, but Dahlia gets almost nothing to do except exist in proximity to extreme violence. Such conspicuously uneven character development puts the entire show on unsteady terrain. 

While neglecting its ensemble, “The Abandons” gives pride of place to its two antiheroines. Both lead actors are well within their wheelhouse: Anderson, the former Margaret Thatcher, as a steely, hoarse-voiced Machiavellian; Headey, who broke out as Cersei Lannister, as a mother willing to cross any number of lines to protect her kids. Though neither is exactly a revelation — in the sense that these talents were revealed long ago — each gets space for menacing monologues and mano a mano match-ups. Nobody will mistake “The Abandons” for a feminist treatise, especially given how the story treats Dahlia, but it’s at least a better iteration on the “women in the Old West” concept than the similarly loglined “Godless,” another Netflix release from 2017. (At least “The Abandons” is equal-opportunity with the graphic violence, another Sutter signature: a baffling appearance from comedian Patton Oswalt — perhaps he’s a “Mayans M.C.” super fan? — as the mayor gets cut short by a CGI grizzly in Episode 2. Sadly, we don’t get to see how bear incursions figure into the subsequent election.)

In other words, “The Abandons” knows what to do with Headey and Anderson, at least until their long-awaited showdown ends unresolved. Would that it showed the same awareness of its other elements. The name refers to a found family hoping to thrive in the looser social strictures of a society still under construction. That’s the setup for a great revisionist period piece, but from a blocky, simplistic title card that takes the place of a proper credits sequence, “The Abandons” is a half-hearted execution. Whatever happened between Sutter and Netflix, plenty of beleaguered sets have produced worthwhile end results. “The Abandons” isn’t one of them.

All seven episodes of “The Abandons” are now streaming on Netflix.