Reviews

OK- A bit of a rocky start. The characters are, well, characterless. The odd events associated with the arrival of the alien ship are all over the place. It would be nice to have a little more backstory for just about everything; it sometimes feels as though we've arrived somewhere in the middle of season 2. Still, I enjoyed it and I'll definitely be watching Ep2. This is one of most promising scifi shows I've seen come along for a while. I just hope they don't turn it into a soap opera the way they do everything these days.

I wasn't going to watch this but then I heard that they were going to have THREE Ferraris! So I had to give it a chance. The two red ones were wrecked and since they were the only things on this show with any personalities that was pretty much the end of it for me. There were some actors and they were saying stuff but nothing you'd want to hear. The original show with 'Reverse Mortgage' guy was much better. It had a much better sense of humor and the characters were likeable- even Higgins. True, Higgins is much better looking in this version but there's no reason to watch the second episode. Really disappointing.

Syfy has somehow managed to drain all the Scifi out of what used to be a promising show. This latest episode is the last I'll watch. The plot and even much the dialog seem to be lifted from a 'Bonanza' or 'Gunsmoke' episode out of the sixties. The show has become a soap opera into which the writers are dumping every cliché there is. There is no more Scifi here- only hidden agendas, backstabbing, murders, politics, moles and spies plotting against the town, betrayals, angry (and murderous) racist mobs of townspeople blaming the innocent Indians, sorry- the Irathients. They even manage to stuff a bit of teenage angst in there. You can't just put a bunch of actors into alien costumes and reuse plots and dialog from 50-year-old TV shows and call it Science Fiction. OK- if it makes money, it becomes its own justification. But Scifi fans deserve better.

I'm really surprised at the negativity directed at this new "Nikita" simply because it's not the old "Nikita". I enjoyed Peta Wilson's Nikita and I enjoyed Maggie Q in this latest version. I think it needs to be taken on it's own merits rather than compared to the original. If your problem is that this is not a frame-by-frame remake of the 1997 version, just Netflix it or buy the DVDs and watch it. (Incidentally, the frame-by-frame remake thing was tried with Hitchcock's "Psycho" and nobody liked it.) Other complaints seem to be about the shows believability, but how does that have anything to do with anything? How believable was "Lost" or "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" or "The Twilight Zone" or any of hundreds of great shows? You could sit there and pick plot holes in all of them if you were determined not to like them. So forget the old "Nikita" for sixty minutes and take this one on it's own merits and I think you'll like it.

This is a flashy, modern, well-done show with lots of pretty girls and boys and costume changes and chase scenes and shoot-outs. Piper Perabo is always a treat. Good, wholesome, mindless summer entertainment that's sure to be a hit.

If, like me, you were expecting an improved version of, "Alias", forget it- "Covert Affairs" has as much sophistication as a "Three Stooges" short or a "Road-runner" cartoon. Watching the pilot, you can see and hear the producers saying to one another, "Just remember how 'Alias' had to be dumbed-down so people could follow it, we don't want to make that mistake."

Edit: I couldn't even watch the whole 2nd episode. I dug out my "Alias" DVD's (I just finished season 3) and now "Covert Affairs" seems even more lame.