The portents for V were beginning to look worrying. ABC announced in a blaze of publicity that it was updating the '80s TV alien invasion show as a full series, but since then seemed to cool on the project, demanding rewrites, forcing a production hiatus, then retooling the first few episodes as a mini series, with a vague promise that more episodes would be shown next year. The network even cancelled a planned skywriting promotion to launch the show. Was the show going to be a turkey?

Not if Variety is to be believed. In a review of the pilot, the trade mag gives the show an enthusiastic, though not unreserved, thumbs up:

"While V might at first appear like a strange Reagan-era artifact, ABC and the producers have concocted an updated reboot that's unexpectedly timely - a strange amalgam of post-Sept. 11 paranoia and science-fiction soap opera. The pilot busily races through too much business, but it dangles a tantalizing array of plots, and features a knockout performance (in more ways than one) by Morena Baccarin as the cool, beguiling alien leader. The network's scheduling gambit - four weeks on in November, then a hiatus - is either genius or folly, but V's maiden voyage rates near the top of the alphabet."

Variety is also very impressed with Morena Baccarin, "who might be TV's coolest alien since the invention of the Vulcan nerve pinch."

Read full review. Minor spoilers, mind.