CW's 'Nikita' is surprisingly satisfying

Ancient mythology is full of beautiful female warriors who kill men without remorse and in high style. So is modern mythology. Not long ago Russian soldiers in Chechnya and South Ossetia were scared silly with improbable tales of Baltic mercenaries, blue-eyed, ice-blooded snipers sometimes known as White Stockings.

The French introduced a frisson of film noir to the fantasy with "La Femme Nikita," the 1990 movie directed by Luc Besson. That character has lingered in the popular imagination, least memorably in the Americanized remake, "Point of No Return," with Bridget Fonda.

The latest incarnation, "Nikita," which begins on the CW network (Ch. 30) at 8 p.m. MT Thursday, is a surprisingly sophisticated and satisfying adaptation. It's as sleek as the 1997-2001 television series "La Femme Nikita," which starred Peta Wilson, but darker and more hard-nosed.

In this version Nikita (Maggie Q, "Live Free or Die Hard") is on the run from the rogue agency that turned her into an assassin and she is more of an avenging insurgent than a victim. Nikita is determined to not just escape her former employers/captors but also to expose and destroy them.

It's tempting to conclude that this take on the Nikita tale reflects the harder times that have come about since the heady Clinton years. But the tougher tone of female empowerment probably has less to do with 9/11, war or the recession than it has to do with "Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles," a cult show on Fox that revived interest in fierce, solitary female heroines rebelling against powerful enemies.

"Nikita" isn't original, but that's not the measure of television series, which are almost always reworking past shows or familiar stories; even some of the best ("30 Rock," "White Collar") steal an old formula and tweak it.

So do some of the worst, a point underscored by "Hellcats," a new CW series about cheerleaders that is absolutely awful. "Glee" has proved that there is plenty of room for innovation and wit in the youthful-angst genre, but "Hellcats," inspired by the 2000 movie "Bring It On," doesn't even try.

Aly Michalka is miscast as Marti Perkins, a tough-talking townie in Memphis who reluctantly becomes a college cheerleader to obtain a pep-squad scholarship so she can get to law school. It's the kind of misfit role that Eliza Dushku played in "Bring It On," and lest any viewer miss the cues, Marti plays a DVD of the movie to prepare for her tryout. She even wears the same kind of midriff-baring cutoff T-shirt that Dushku wore to auditions in the movie.

But Michalka, while lithe and shapely, doesn't have Dushku's sulky charisma. (That actress' wooden expression was so persuasive that she briefly had her own turn as a Nikita-like human robot on the Fox drama "Dollhouse.")