Once a Thief

A couple of weeks ago I discovered an intersting thing. Namely that one of our TV stations shows Once a Thief (leci jako "Był sobie złodziej" na Tele5 jakby ktoś miał ochotę sprawdzić). Since I somehow ended up watching anything with Nicholas Lea in it - not sure how it happened, some films/TV shows just appear out of thin air sometimes - I've been watching OaT too.

The show is, in a word, bizarre. Sometimes it looks like manga or anime: the poetics of an old kung-fu films, which don't exactly mesh with western settings and basic plot. It creates a curious dissonance, but apart from that, the show is pretty OK and often quite funny.

Some info about the series: the show is based on a John Woo film Once a Thief, though the creators of the series are Glenn Davis and William Laurin.
The main cast includes: Sandrine Holt (as Li Ann Tsei), Ivan Sergei (as Mac Ramsey) and Nicholas Lea (as Victor Mansfield).
Plot summary (copied off IMDb because I'm lazy): the story follows Mac Ramsey and Li Ann Tsei, lovers and professional thieves who are separated while fleeing the powerful Hong Kong underworld crime lord who raised and trained them. After being imprisoned in Hong Kong, Mac is forcefully recruited into a clandestine international crime-fighting unit by a hard-nosed, menacing director. He is teamed in Vancouver with Li Ann, who thought Mac was dead, and her new fiancé Victor Mansfield, an ex-cop who is attracted to the unorthodox methods of the agency.

My favourite characters are actually the secondary ones: two assassins, called The Cleaners, Mr Murphy and Mr Camier. Both erudites, with British accents and impeccable manners (and one of them has a gun in his umbrella which he carries everywhere, how cool is that? :)). And also Nathan, the paranoid librarian. Seriously, he puts the Lone Gunmen to shame.

But the best thing was really yesterday's episode. The Director Files was a spoof of The X-Files, featuring Special Agent Diller as "Mulder" and Special Agent Clansey as his red-haired sceptical partner. There was previously one in-joke in the series involving The X-Files when Li Ann during her talk with Vic about one case involving maybe-vampires, said "What's that supposed to be? An X-file?" but this one is obviously more elaborate. The ending was especially funny: there's this big warehouse where Li Ann, Vic, Mac, The Cleaners and Jackie are a bit under the pressure from the bad guys. Suddenly there barges in our FBI duo yelling "Freeze, FBI", Vic and Mac take the opportunity to grab and beat up the bad guys (which earns them a raised eyebrow from "Scully"), Diller says something vaguely nasty, Vic sneers something like "Nice shot, Spooky" and Diller says "Don't call me 'Spooky', Ratboy." ♥ *iz ded* :D

So, if you ever stumble across the show, watch it. Good for a laugh or two.