Red Widow" holds it own as a compelling drama

Marta Walraven (nee Petrov)'s life is turned upside down by her husband's violent death, the consequences of his shady business partnership with her brother, Irwin, and their longtime friend, Mike. She inherits the fallout in the form of a large (and temporarily missing) shipment of stolen cocaine and a Romanian mob boss named Schiller seeking compensation for his stolen shipment in the form of her unwilling employment as his import/export handler for smuggled drugs and guns. Thus she is dragged back into her family's Bratva (Russian mob) lifestyle that she had tried so hard to distance herself and her children from, and in the midst of this, has to contend with her own grief and that of her three children; some very persistent feds sniffing at her door; family tension between brother Irwin, the coke thief, and her father Andrei Petrov, Russian mob patriarch; and the constant scheming between her coke fiend business partner, Mike

Is it "Breaking Bad" or "Weeds" or "The Sopranos"...? No, but I didn't expect it to be. This is network television, not cable. And even with that (apparently) crippling anchor attached to it, I think "Red Widow" holds it own as a compelling drama and isn't necessarily trying to be another series about the criminal underworld or the mob. That's just the backdrop for the story. To me, it's about the mama bear instinct, a woman's determination to do whatever necessary to survive and to keep her children safe and as far removed from the violent life she grew up in as a Petrov.

Add to that the dynamite chemistry portrayed by Radha Mitchell (Marta) and Goran Visnjic (Schiller), and you've got damn good television that keeps people (granted, probably majority female, along with the rest of ABC's viewer base for its Sunday night lineup of "Once..." and "Revenge") avidly tuned in to see how it all plays out in this woefully short 8-episode season. "Red Widow" is ABC's mid-season replacement for another very promising new series ("Last Resort") that was not given a chance to shine.