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ABC, Sundays, 9 p.m.
In some ways, Joan Allen is playing a very similar character in The Family to the one she played in last fall’s Room. Both had teenage children kidnapped by sexual predators who returned years later. But her character in Room is doting, kind and selfless. In the new TV drama The Family, Allen plays the deeply cynical Claire Warren, the mayor of a small city in Maine, whose political career was made by her son’s kidnapping and who uses his return to propel her to the governor’s mansion. She’s assisted by her own mini-me Willa (Alison Pill), who is much more complicated and conflicted than she lets on. The show goes to all sorts of weird places, but the acting is superlative, giving particularly Allen and Pill meaty roles.
