What’s a primetime TV season without a sophisticated family soap opera? ABC’s new drama Brothers & Sisters sufficiently fits the bill.
The show focuses on the California-based Walker family. The parents are William Walker (Tom Skerritt), the larger-than-life patriarch and president of the family business, and his adoring wife Nora (Sally Field), who’s also very opinionated. As for the five siblings, we have: the oldest Sarah (Rachel Griffiths), the corporate VP who returns to the family business but struggles with a long-term marriage; Tommy (Balthazar Getty), the loyal son who also works for Dad and is young married with no kids; Kevin (Matthew Rhys), the gay lawyer cautiously learning about love; Justin (Dave Annable), the baby of the family, grappling with war trauma and addiction; and Kitty (Calista Flockhart), right-wing radio host turned TV pundit who has always been Daddy’s little girl. There’s also Saul Holden (Ron Rifkin), Nora’s dandyish brother, and Patricia Wettig as the mystery woman who could bring the Walkers and their company down.
It opens on Kitty returning home after a long absence, and we immediately see the dynamics. The sibs are all pretty close to one another, while Kitty is deeply estranged with her mother, who is a devout liberal. Dad may or may not be having an affair with Wettig’s character, while Uncle Saul, who’s also in the family biz, may or may not using shady business practices. But all that changes when William suffers from what looks to be a fatal heart attack at show’s end. Ah, let the grieving process begin.
The show must have also seem attractive to its cast, including Oscar-winner Sally Field. Way back when she was a flying nun on TV, Field had a tough time being taken seriously as a movie actress. Now, she probably realizes how few and far between good movie roles are for actresses her age and is returning to her original roots, playing Nora for all she’s worth. Flockhart, too, is making a bit of a comeback, having taken an extended hiatus from her Ally McBeal days. Although, as the conservative Kitty, you wish a little kooky Ally would come out. The rest of the cast rise to the occasion, but Griffiths may feel like she’s stepped down a bit since her days on that other family drama, HBO’s superb Six Feet Under. I mean, she at least got to have sex on Six.
Brothers & Sisters is meant to explore what it means to be a family in the 21st century, and how these brothers and sisters balance their own lives as they strive to accept their parents as people–flawed, contradictory and forgivable–rather than just as a father and mother. But we know it’s just about the drama. And coming from creator Ken Olin, best known for starring in thirtysomething in the ‘90s (along with Wettig, his real-life wife), it’s easy to see how the soap histrionics originate. This time Olin stays behind the camera and gently guides his talent to wax on and off.
Bottom Line: Following Desperate Housewives, Brothers & Sisters should make a nice companion piece to a Sunday evening full of over-the-top dramatics.