John Woo's Once a Thief: Once Was Enough


The series had little chance for success from the get-go. The ratings were extremely low when it premiered (less than 0.5% of the population watched the series premiere), and by the time the series was cancelled (the official announcement came down in March of 1998, but viewers pretty much knew before that), no one could FIND the ratings. As well, the drawing force behind the series (aside from the actors -- most OAT fans were Nick Lea fans who followed him from "The X Files"), creator and "executive producer" John Woo had about as much hands-on experience with the series as oh, say...me. That soon became very obvious as the series went on. In November of 1997, the series went on hiatus for two months -- the official reason was that they had run out of episodes. (In fact, many Canadian serieses do go on hiatus from November to January. Perhaps they're waiting to be picking up for the new season.) After the hiatus, in an attempt to boost the ratings, they moved the series from 10:00 pm Monday to 10:00 pm Saturday, previously the timeslot for "La Femme Nikita", which has good ratings in both the US and Canada.

Nothing worked. The series was eventually cancelled due to low ratings and lack of cash. Because OAT was strictly CanCon (meaning there was only Canadian money going in, and the series did not air in the US), there was a decided lack of funding, and an even greater lack of interest. The series still exists today on mailing lists and webpages everywhere, and has spawned countless megabytes worth of fanfic. OAT actually has one of the largest on-Net collections of slash fanfic (slash being fanfic that, if it were a movie, would most likely have an NC-17 rating).

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The copyright of the article John Woo's Once a Thief: Once Was Enough in Canadian Television is owned by Jael Mehr. Permission to republish John Woo's Once a Thief: Once Was Enough in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.

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