Nikita

The pilot comes across top-heavy with exposition and flashbacks that lay out a dense backstory. While a rich mythology typically is mandatory for an espionage series to attract a cult following, it could prove a barrier to entry when piled too high at the beginning.

If you don't want or need to be surprised, it's a pretty well-paced, gorgeously shot and fast-moving pilot, and Maggie Q, who is practically computer-designed to play the role, seems worth all the publicity investment The CW has placed in her.

Ms. Q's Nikita is only half so crush-worthy as Bionic Woman's Jaime Sommers or Dollhouse's what's-her-name, but her predicament is no less tasty.

The CW remake isn't awful, by any means. The pilot rushes ahead nicely, with a twist at the end that gestures toward many possible future plotlines. But we've seen the whole thing many times before.

It's difficult to make cold-blooded and calculating people interesting and empathetic, and yet it must be done. Because fight scenes will take you only so far. Especially when there are no big dance numbers.

"Doll House" covered this territory with more creativity, but we could always use another female superhero on TV. Especially one who has mastered the technology of the "lipstick bomb."

It's an hour that you'll be able to understand and appreciate, even if you love "Sons of Anarchy" more. Sometimes it's fun to take a spin on your old bike, so to speak.

Even with its ample servings of va-va-boom, a lot of edgy potential is wasted in Nikita, the CW's retinkering of the much-tinkered-with story of the sexy assassin who is betrayed and hunted by "the Division," the top-secret government agency that trained her.

What I can say is that despite my admiration for an energetic performance by Q (between "Hellcats" and "Nikita," the CW seems determined to show its new stars getting more of a workout than you'll see on, say, "Gossip Girl"), and a lingering fondness for West that goes all the way back to "Once and Again," there was nothing in tonight's episode that made me care enough about any of these characters to spend a single unpaid minute with them.