**Warning: Some Spoilers**

Much about ABC's new hour-long drama Brothers and Sisters sounds like the sort of sure-fire hit that networks execs dream about. The cast alone testifies to its promise. Stars Calista Flockhart and Sally Field have managed to ingratiate themselves into the hearts of TV viewers with quirky, lighter fare like Ally McBeal and The Flying Nun, respectively.

But at the same time, both actresses have also pursued other work that has proven their ability to deftly handle serious drama.

Add Rachel Griffiths — whose work as Brenda on Six Feet Under made her as complex and as imminently necessary as any of the core family member characters on that show — and you have a troika of skilled actresses who could engage an audience even if the performance consisted of reading the ingredients of their favorite shampoos.

Brothers and Sisters creator Jon Robin Baitz tests the combined acting power of these stars, however, as the show depicts the lives of its characters as being steeped in a subject with which Americans have a love-hate relationship: politics.

It's no West Wing, of course, seeing as how the Walker family saga exists against the backdrop of the family business, an agricultural outfit in Ojai, California. However, politics pervades much of what these characters say and do.

Kitty Walker (Flockhart) is a right-wing pundit who is considering switching from a radio format to the kind of talking head, red-versus-blue cable TV news show that so frequently serve as the forums for political discussion today.

Her liberal, gay brother Kevin (Matthew Rhys) smirks at Kitty's values and resents that her party status so often results in his being requested to join the Log Cabin Republicans. Little brother Justin (Dave Annable) has recently returned to the family after a military stint in Afghanistan. And parents Nora (Sally Field) and William (Tom Skerritt) have seemingly sustained a fruitful marriage despite having opposite political beliefs.

In these politically divisive times, a politically tinged family drama is an entirely appropriate idea for a TV show — perhaps even a badly needed one. But will Americans join the Walkers in the battle to reconcile their beliefs with the practicalities of being functional adults in a family that frequently disagrees on these issues? Will viewers readily allow politicized red-and-blue disputes to seep into their prime time entertainment hours, especially when the majority of viewers are readily watching escapist fare like Desperate Housewives, 24 and Lost?

We'll know by the end of this TV season, if not even sooner, and the answer will be telling. But, politics aside, if viewers choose to turn up their noses at what amounts to a more realistic portrayal of American life, they'd be denying themselves a well crafted hour of what may well be the better ensemble dramas to air on network TV.

Gay viewers may especially find reason to watch. Not only was Brothers and Sisters created and written by a gay man (Baitz), but it includes that elusive creature almost as rare on network television as a yeti—an openly gay man who not only knows he is gay, but is comfortable with it. Given the show's political bent, it's also hard not to imagine that gay issues—especially same-sex marriage—are likely to surface during the course of the season.