The Abandons, a Western drama from Sons of Anarchy creator Kurt Sutter, has wrapped after just one season, Netflix has confirmed. Set in the 1850s, the series starred Lena Headey as an Irish woman living alongside a found family of adult orphans, with Gillian Anderson playing a silver mine owner determined to seize their land. The show’s production was famously rocky, with Sutter exiting the project just weeks before filming concluded due to creative differences with Netflix — a disruption many critics felt showed up on screen.

Set in Washington Territory in 1854, the story begins as what looks like a routine land dispute — until it quickly proves to be anything but. The land is valuable, influence is for sale, and almost everyone involved is nursing scars that go far deeper than the frontier itself. What follows isn’t a classic Western so much as a brutal fight for control, where survival isn’t won through grit or honor, but bought, and at a cost. The series also starred Nick Robinson, Diana Silvers, Aisling Franciosi, Lucas Till, Lamar Johnson and Natalia del Riego.

Is ‘The Abandons’ Worth Watching?

Well, it wasn’t as good as it needed to be, clearly. It’s undeniable that the series is packed with huge talent and highly engaging performances, particularly from the two iconic leads at the heart of the story, but it seems like that doesn’t add up to much more than window dressing. Collider‘s Carly Lane labeled the series as “plodding“, opinining that Headey and Anderson deserve much better than what they were given, and noting her take that original helmer Kurt Sutter‘s disagreement with Netflix executives had a material effect on the final product:

“The Netflix Western series can’t sustain any significant narrative momentum, despite the two acting powerhouses that are billed highest. The show’s episodes are wildly divergent in runtime — some stretch for closer to an hour, while others only clock in at around 35 minutes — and both the story and characters ultimately suffer for it. There may have been a glimmer of promise in the premise when The Abandons was first announced, especially for a genre that has rarely been led onscreen by women, but the plodding end product that was cobbled together after Sutter’s departure can’t successfully be carried on Anderson and Headey’s strengths alone.”

The Abandons is streaming on Netflix now.

via Collider