Once A Thief, typically marketed as "John Woo's Once A Thief", is a 1990s Canadian comedy-drama action thriller TV series that ran from 1996 - 1998. Intended to be a goofy, parody-like take on Chinese action movies, Once A Thief follows the misadventures of three spies, their mysterious "Director", a ditzy teenage mob boss, and two assassins.
Main spy Li Ann Tsei was played by Sandrine Holt, while fellow male spies Mac Ramsey and Victor Mansfield were portrayed by Ivan Sergei and Nicholas Lea, respectively.
Once A Thief is largely comedy-based. The Director (played by Jennifer Dale) is a BDSM fetishist with an affinity for leather bondage, assassins Murphy and Camier (Greg Kramer and Julian Richings) are supposed to be sociopaths but regularly grapple with their burgeoning empathy and feelings of friendship towards the spies, and Jackie Janczyk (Victoria Pratt), a powerful mob boss, is a blonde teenage girl who lives a spoiled lifestyle, wears all pink and has pool parties with giant teddy bears. There are regular parodies per episode of everything from A Clockwork Orange to The X-Files, and the series becomes increasingly silly into its last few episodes.
This series contains examples of the following tropes:
- Curious Qualms of Conscience: Camier increasingly leans towards this issue the more he kills people, to the point where it troubles him deeply later.
- Everyone Loves Blondes: Even if Jackie's a mob boss, she's still the cute blonde chick, but thankfully the series avoids sterotyping her as a dumb blonde by giving her intelligence and good business sense.
- Parody: Many episodes of the series are goofy parodies of serious media; this includes A Clockwork Orange, The X-Files and other media.
- Rebellious Spirit: Mac's teenage kid sister comes to visit him, unaware of what he does for work. She announces that she has changed her name to "Allegra", dresses like a punk and annoys her parents.
- Road Apples: Murphy trips and lands face-first in a fresh cow patty. Camier lifts his old buddy up by the shoulders, says "Merry Christmas!", and grins at Murphy's dirty face.
- Rule of Sexy: Most of what the Director wants is either implausible or dangerous, but she's a hot leather fetishist, so it's all good.
