TV: Nikita (CW, Thurs 9)

This setup won't die, will it? The timeline:

• 1990: The French film Nikita, released in the US as La Femme Nikita
• 1993: The American remake, Point of No Return
• 1997-2001: The USA Network TV series (back when no one paid much attention to basic cable series) La Femme Nikita

And now, the CW gives us another incarnation. The premise is the same: Nikita (played this time around by Maggie Q) was a troubled street kid, living a life of crime; on the verge of getting into really serious trouble, she found herself taken into custody by a secret government agency -- they're called Division here -- who have faked her death and are going to give her a second chance at life. All she has to do is allow Division to train and use her as an assassin. The movies both end with Nikita's escape from the evil agency.

And that's where this Nikita begins. Nikita's been on the run from Division for three years, and her goal is to destroy them entirely. But since the original version of the story was so successful, the CW hasn't abandoned it entirely; in parallel with NIkita's anti-Division crusade, we get the story of Alex (Lyndsey Fonseca), a new Division recruit whose story, it seems, will parallel that of Nikita's in the earlier versions of the story.

If this is also reminding you of Alias, well, sure; that show was obviously strongly influenced by the many lives of Nikita, and in turn, its influence can be seen here, most obviously in the characters who populate Division. You've got Percy (Xander Berkeley), the oily head of the agency; Michael (Shane West), the hunky agent who was once Nikita's recruiter, and is now Alex's; and Birkhoff (Aaron Stanford), the computer/tech geek; if you can watch these three and not think of Alias's Sloane, Vaughn, and Marshall, then you're a tougher man than I am.

We also have on hand a pair of Alex's fellow recruits -- not terribly interesting characters yet -- and Amanda (Melinda Clarke), whose job it will be to take tough kid Alex and turn her into the sort of sophisticated lady who can infiltrate high society functions (because that's where all the best assassinations take place, don'cha know?).

In an odd way, the first episode of Nikita reminded me of last night's Hellcats debut, in that neither show is out to break any new ground; each is treading fairly familiar territory, and each is doing what it does very nicely. Nikita is a show with more inherent appeal to me than Hellcats, and I'm likely to stick with the show for at least a few weeks (for me, at least, there's nothing else of interest going on in that timeslot). There's room for lots of interesting backstory to be filled in as the show's mythology develops, not only in Nikita's relationships with her former Division colleagues, but in the events that led to Alex's recruitment. And the final scene of the pilot drops a spectacular plot twist that will lead to even more fascinating revelations.

Nikita doesn't seem an obvious fit with the CW audience, and I wonder how much of the Vampire Diaries audience will stick around. But this is an awfully good first episode, and they've certainly got me hooked.