Jackie Janczyk, the daughter of a mob boss, who comes to work for the Agency. DVD release In June 2011, Alliance Home Entertainment released John Woo's Once a Thief: The Complete Series on DVD in Region 1 (Canada only) for the very first time. Reception The first episode, "The Big Bang Theory", was number 7 in the Canadian Nielsen ratings, and the second episode, "Rave On", was number 14. By the end of its run, the show was at the bottom of the list. In episode 20, there is a reference to the audience's unfavorable reaction to the show: when the Director is told that the trio is coming along well, she replies "that depends on who you talk to". Allusions Several episodes are parodies of other TV shows and film genres: Episode 6, Wang Wang Doodle, spoofs the leading cast as Earth agent characters from the Men in Black. It also had a gang called The Droogs which used some dialogue, and sampled music from A Clockwork Orange. In Episode 7, It Happened One Night, a character quotes lyrics from Prince's 1999. Episode 9, Jaded Love, spoofed black and white mystery movies of the '40s and '50s. The plot device, or MacGuffin, and story elements were borrowed from the Humphrey Bogart film The Maltese Falcon. The ending shot in the episode was composed like the end shot from Casablanca, and used the dialogue from that same scene in the film which also starred Bogart. Episode 18 features several scenes which are parodies of The X-Files, the show on which Nicholas Lea played Alex Krycek: The characters of Agent Clancy (Alexa Gilmour) and Agent Diller (Graham Abbey) are spoofs of Agents Mulder and Scully. The investigation is often done by torchlight, and timestamps appear at the bottom of the screen. The Mulder lookalike has a scene in which he calls Vic "Ratboy" (the nickname of Krycek) and Vic calls him "Spooky" (the nickname of Mulder). Nathan serves as a kind of The Lone Gunmen-esque figure. Agent Clancy and Agent Diller have a cell phone conversation like Scully and Mulder often do, but they are within a few feet of each other and in plain view at the time. Episode 19, Shaken Not Stirred, spoofs James Bond-esque spy dramas. Episode 19's subplot, featuring the organisation's assassins Camier and Murphy, is a parody of the Samuel Beckett play Waiting for Godot. References