"There's Constance (Gillian Anderson), the steely widowed matriarch of the Van Nesses, a rich mining family in the Washington Territory of the 1850s. She's got two obnoxiously entitled sons, Willem (Toby Hemingway) and Garret (Lucas Till) and a pretty, sensitive daughter Trisha (Aisling Franciosi). The wealth of the Van Ness mines ensures that she's got the town's mayor (Patton Oswalt(!)) and sheriff (Marc Menchaca) under her thumb, and she's got a pair of enforcers to do her dirty work (Michael Greyeyes, Michiel Huisman)."
"Which turns out to be important, because those mines are running dry, and Constance has her eye on a patch of real estate owned by poor cattle-rancher Fiona (Lena Headey), another steely matriarch. Fiona heads up her own found family of misfits on a ranch called The Abandons, including the headstrong Dahlia (Diana Silvers), the wary Lilla Belle (Natalia del Riego) and the sweet, doe-eyed Elias (Nick Robinson)."
"Toss into the mix some fellow settlers (Lamar Johnson, Ryan Hurst, and a handful of others) and you got yourself a teeming ensemble of players. This being the Old West, more than one of the above-mentioned characters don't make it through the first couple episodes. But the rest get enough screentime to progress through their own storylines, their own tiny, bespoke narrative arcs, over the course of the show's seven-episode season."
The Abandons unfolds in the Washington Territory during the 1850s and centers on Constance Van Ness, a wealthy mining matriarch whose mines are running dry. Constance exerts political control through the mayor, sheriff, and enforcers while coveting land owned by Fiona, a resilient cattle-rancher leading a found family at The Abandons. The show assembles a large ensemble — entitled Van Ness children, Fiona's mixed group of ranchers, settlers, bandits, Native Americans, and the military — and quickly eliminates some characters while developing multiple compact narrative arcs across seven episodes.
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