Nikita: The Complete First Season [Blu-Ray]

Having been made into two movies and a long-running television series all within the last 21 years, it seems a bit redundant to again tackle the Nikita mythology, wherein a sexy young woman becomes a conflicted killing machine for a clandestine company after hitting rock bottom as a junkie. And while that's true, there's something clever and appealing about the CW variation on the subject, which has the actual Nikita (Maggie Q) on the run from Division, trying to take them down by revisiting old hits with some help on the inside from a nascent recruit named Alex (Lyndsy Fonseca). Even though their mode of encrypted communication is a bit of a stretch, seeing as the Division recruits are surveilled constantly, yet Alex manages to sneak into the computer lab on a daily basis, the building of their relationship and gradual revealing of character secrets and motivators work quite well on a dramatic level. Similarly, the constant tension that comes from Alex sneaking around trying to hide her true intentions adds a constant dimension of peril to the series not present in previous renditions. And while the actual main plot conflicts keep things engaging from episode to episode, the nitty-gritty of individual storylines, wherein they expose a sweatshop or revisit a botched kill, can seem like boring white noise. Fortunately, they know when things are lagging, throwing in a few ultra-violent, shocking episodes, revitalising a formula in danger of going stale. While far from perfect and occasionally clichéd, this new Nikita has some solid action and enough ongoing complexity to engage anyone looking for yet another show about half-naked women kicking ass. The four-disc Blu-Ray set includes an abundance of supplemental material, such as in-depth character profiles for all of the leads, along with extended interview segments on conceiving the show and executing the episodes. There's also an interactive map that revisits the missions through geography and timelines, which is fun to explore.