Television: Shadowland

A drama looks at mental illness, with empathy

There's no lack of crazy folks on TV. As in Stark Raving Mad, as in "cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs," as in, that Dharma? Woo, is she cra-a-zy!

Mentally ill, though, that's another story. "The shadow people," as the psychiatric drama Wonderland (ABC, debuts March 30, 10 p.m. E.T.) calls them, pervade overstressed hospitals and precincts in real life, yet lurk invisible in prime time's institutional dramas. This literate and impeccably executed series, alas, may prove why. From the opening scene of a patients' group session devolving into a shouting match, to the story of a multiple murderer with a Zeus complex,...

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