Ah, the Western. That great American canvas, upon which many sorts of motion pictures have been projected, stretching back to the very beginning of the medium: adventure, romance, comedic, serious, simplistic, artistic, racist, revisionist, historical, metaphorical, low-budget, big-budget, dark, light, set in a wild landscape or on the edge of it, where the deer and the antelope play, etc., etc.

In 1939, the year John Ford made "Stagecoach," elevating John Wayne to stardom, Roy Rogers and Gene Autry were also busy. (If Wikipedia is to be trusted, something like 120 Westerns were released that year.) Roy and Gene would also have television careers when the tube came knocking, birthing a wealth of Westerns — "Bonanza," "Gunsmoke," "The Rifleman," "The Virginian," "Maverick," "Have Gun, Will Travel," I could go on from here to Missouri. This year we've had "American Primeval" and "Ransom Canyon," the ongoing brilliance of "Dark Winds" and the continuing adventures of Taylor Sheridan.

With so many movies and television series working that vein over more than a century, it's no surprise that the same material turns up again and again. "The Abandons," a new Western premiering this week on Netflix, is thick with old plot points and character types. (Seven episodes out of 10 were available to review.) Admittedly, creator Kurt Sutter has given the tropes a bit of a spin, making two women — played by Gillian Anderson and Lena Headey — adversarial matriarchal leads, but the nuts and bolts come right off the shelf.

We are in the town of Angel's Ridge in Washington Territory in the year 1854. Constance Van Ness (Anderson) and Fiona Nolan (Headey) are widows — but not "widder women" — each in charge of her business, turf and adult children. Constance is upper-class, cold, refined, ambitious and the owner of a silver mine. Her brood consists of Willem (Toby Hemingway), the problem child; Garret (Lucas Till), the younger but more capable son (he wears a suit), trouble in his own way; and Trisha (Aisling Franciosi), a fair flower who will nonetheless curse like a sailor at times. She plays Schubert on the piano, a character detail that feels tacked on, but at least it is a character detail.

Fiona is her almost mathematically conceived opposite, an earthy rancher with four adopted grown children; there's a horrible dead husband in her backstory. Elias (Nick Robinson) and Dahlia (Diana Silvers) are brother and sister, whose late father left the money for the land upon which Fiona has built their ranch. (Guided and gifted, in her mind, by God.) With them are Albert (Lamar Johnson) and Lilla Belle (Natalia del Riego), "two angels alone and hurting" Fiona met along the way. They are "five abandoned souls, now kin," and so call their ranch the Abandons.

Production is down at the mine, which Constance fears will make "my primary associate, the esteemed Mr. Vanderbilt," as in Cornelius, withdraw his investment, which in turn will make Angel's Ridge slide "back into the mud" and won't do Constance any good either. (The town, as even the sheriff describes it, belongs to her.) And so she lusts after a suspected vein of silver running under Jasper Hollow, occupied by Fiona's ranch and three other families, none of whom are in a rush to leave, despite A) her offers of money and B) acts of sabotage to force them to go. They debate whether to "go to the law" or handle her themselves, and because they are democrats, vote on it.

The collision of wealthy, often industrial interests with humble workers on the land has been the basis of many a Western; we are meant, as feeling humans, to side with the farmers and the ranchers against the mine owners as custodians rather than despoilers of the Earth. That Willem calls Isaac the blacksmith "a dirty little Jew" doesn't speak well for the Van Nesses, either, but we'll see much worse from him before the opening episode is out — and then we won't see him.

On the other hand, Fiona is more than a little crazy and Constance, in her icy way, can seem almost reasonable. At times it seems that the two, as mothers, might be about to make some interesting connection, even common cause, but they are driven apart by mutual antipathy and the fact that each will be guilty of some awful stuff against the other.

"Our struggle, Fiona," says Constance, "is a matter concerning property, not children."

"All matters concern my children," replies Fiona.

"But do our children need such concern or do we slyly foster it clinging to our motherly purpose?" Well, that is the question, and you do wonder why these kids don't just light out for Portland. (Constance, whom one would not exactly call maternal, believes her motherly purpose is superior to Fiona's, "it being one of blood"; Fiona responds, "Love is not shared through blood.")

There's a "Romeo and Juliet" subplot as well, involving Elias and Trisha, and though Sutter may not have had Shakespeare specifically on his mind, given that his "Sons of Anarchy" contained a whole lot of "Hamlet," it seems not unlikely. Other plots involve bandits, guns and an Indigenous tribe, the Cayuse, about to sign a treaty and a rebel faction out to scotch it.

In spite of supercharged performances by the two leads, there's something pasteboard about the characters, drawn in thick outlines but not really colored in; that the actors are saddled with old-timey dialogue makes them less rather than more real. (As is often the case, minor players make a more lifelike impression, including Michael Greyeyes and Michiel Huisman, who do work, cleaner and dirtier, for Constance, and Ryan Hurst as one of the Jasper Hollow inhabitants, a quiet man with a past and a way with guns, another popular Western type.)

The series is busy, certainly, and frequently violent, with a few impressive set pieces, but majestic Canadian scenery aside, "The Abandons" feels artificial, schematic. (Good characters get to make pure, naked love; bad ones have pervy sex — implied, not shown.) Any random three minutes of "Deadwood" or even a still photo of Wayne seem more genuinely expressive of its times, however historically accurate or fanciful they may be. In spite of a nicely conceived main street and a decent complement of extras, Angel's Ridge itself never comes alive. (Patton Oswalt appears briefly as the mayor, his only real job to provide a body for expository dialogue to stream across.) The silver mining at the bottom of all this business isn't portrayed at all, nor are any practical matters of running a ranch; everyone's too busy fussing and feuding, I suppose. Cornelius Vanderbilt, glimpsed briefly on his way to visit Constance, disappears, presumably to resurface in the concluding three episodes; and by "concluding" I mean whatever brings us to the cliffhanger I assume is coming.

Beyond the hope of seeing horrible people punished and not-horrible people flourish, which I am always down for, did I care much about the fate of Jasper Hollow or Constance's silver mine? I can't say that I did.

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'THE ABANDONS'

Rating: TV-MA

How to watch: Netflix

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