After watching the complete season of Painkiller Jane, I seriously don't know why it had to be canceled. There were enough other shows that rather deserved to be canceled. OK, characters are mostly cliché, like the genius computer nerd and weakling, the hitter with the foul mouth and a criminal past, the gentle doc, and the ex-lieutenant as the team leader. But apart from the sparsely inventive concept, there is not much negative to say about the show.
The team, together with mysteriously self-healing Jane Vasco and her friend Maureen, goes for the so-called 'Neuros', who have superpowers because of special genetic mutations, and use their powers to commit crimes or are at least possible threats to normal humans. Mainly the stories are told from center character Jane's point of view, and it turns out that Jane has genetic similarities with the Neuros, which are products of genetic engineering. Actually she isn't one of them, she is the final stage of those techniques, while the Neuros are only interim results, and she can't be deactivated (chipped) like them.
There wasn't any high budget involved, like with "Battlestar Galactica" for example, but it does never look poor or cheap or hasty. Actors did a good job, scriptwriters also by changing the focus from time to time and delivering some dry humor, so it came to an entertaining show with a potential for three or four seasons at least.
The show has very little in common with the original comic series, which are far more brutal and far more apart from our reality. Fans of the comic series may be disappointed, but in fact it would be impossible to make a convincing TV show with a closer approach to the comics. Besides, the comics didn't have a bigger storyline, and the Jane character isn't that interesting or worked out properly except for her fighting/shooting abilities.
The TV show, on the contrary, gives insights to Jane's struggles with her newly discovered abilities, being human or not, hunting people who don't always deserve being caught and locked up, having a normal life beside working for a secret agency, conflicts with her part of the mission, and so on. It's kind of Nikita, where in this older show we didn't get so much of the main character's personality. Painkiller Jane is a bit chatty and doesn't always center on combat, but keeps always being interesting.
In the last few episodes, where the production team seemingly realized that the show was going to be canceled, things become a bit hasty and incoherently, to collect open ends and resolve some mysteries. This begins early enough, so one could accept the show to be planned only for one season.
Opposed to other reviews here, I think Kristanna Loken is fully capable to fill her role, not only from the measurements point of view, but also from her acting stills. It's quite easy to bash the main actor of a canceled show, saying she or her can't play, as most people don't know what that means or what's the difference between good and bad acting. Loken is not one of the bad actors, let me assure you.
The show itself was far from being perfect, but also far from being bad, maybe a bit too late 90's style for a 2007 production. But remembering the first season of "Terminator The Sarah Connor Chronicles", Painkiller Jane definitively deserved a second season to grow up.
