`Brothers & Sisters,' love and politics

HAVING gone out of fashion with the Bartlett presidency on "The West Wing," the issues drama is back, with less policy talk and more family therapy, on ABC's "Brothers & Sisters." Frankly I'm shocked (but gladdened) that this series made it through season one, after getting off to such an iffy start. Calista Flockhart as Ann Coulter? And then you want to bring Sally Field onstage as her type-A, bleeding-heart mother? And then you want to bring on "Six Feet Under" refugee Rachel Griffiths as her marriage-challenged, sex-starved sister?

But instead of sagging under the weight of its cast, "Brothers & Sisters" has, more often than not, proven to be a substantive companion to that silly-goose of a long-running hit, "Desperate Housewives," conveying a more seamless approach to topical punditry than the more celebrated -- and since canceled -- "Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip."

Created by playwright Jon Robin Baitz and produced with Ken Olin (of "thirtysomething" fame) and "Everwood's" Greg Berlanti, the show resurrects the upper-middle-class family as center stage for the highly emotional and highly informed.

The pilot of "Brothers & Sisters" was about Kitty Walker (Flockhart) leaving Manhattan for an L.A. job interview and then staying when the Walker paterfamilias (Tom Skerritt) drops dead of a heart attack.

His death revealed a shadow life with a mistress (and child). It's a credit to the series that the first season ended Sunday night with much having shifted -- but by emotional, as much as physical, degrees. The father's mistress (the excellent Patricia Wettig) has gone from evil gold-digger to semi-accepted partner in the family business; kid brother Justin (Dave Annable) deployed to Iraq; and Kitty's now engaged to the centrist Republican Sen. Robert McCallister (Rob Lowe), having already quit her "Crossfire"-type show to work for his presidential bid.

In effect she took Jon Stewart's advice to then-CNN yakkers Paul Begala and Tucker Carlson to "stop hurting America." The banter between Kitty and Robert is a Hollywood meet-cute over and over, but it says something: Namely, how much more endearing would presidential contenders be if we saw them falling in love as opposed to stiffly attached to wives in classic Chanel?

The midseason pairing of Lowe with Flockhart has given the show sexual chemistry, even if the richest dialogue -- and where "Brothers & Sisters" is most immediate as an issues drama -- is in the tete-a-tete between Kitty and her brother Kevin (Matthew Rhys).