L/R: Licensed By Royalty Mission File 1: Deceptions (DVD)
APPROX. 100 MINS. - PROD. YEAR: 2003 - MPA RATING: MA15
" ...it’s not like this show aspires to be anything more than what it is, a decent spy-action series.
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I originally mistook the title to stand for "Left/Right" when I first looked at the DVD case. Upon closer inspection, I saw that it actually stands for "Licensed by Royalty". This DVD contains four episodes, "Be Traced", "A Taste of Secret", "A Girl Goes to the City", and "Sweet Enemies in the Same Desert".
The first episode opens with practically no background information on the main characters, Jack and Rowe. They´re secret agents for the royal family of Ishtar (a fictitious country that is in every way identical to Great Britain, including a large clock tower) who work in the private sector. Between the two of them, they pretty much have the entire spectrum of secret agents covered—one is the suave, sophisticated, lady´s man-type agent, and the other is the more scruffy, action-oriented agent. Admittedly, I only watched this disc once, but I can´t, for the life of me, remember which was which.
I was left scratching my head for much of the first episode, as I just couldn´t figure out where to place this show. It was sort of reminiscent of "Cowboy Bebop", minus the great character depth. Jack and Rowe are attempting to recover a royal artifact that a museum curator had stolen. After cornering him and his lovely assistant onboard a zeppelin, Jack and Rowe move in, only to find that the artifact is missing. "Maybe it´s hidden in the assistant´s ample cleavage," I thought dismissively. To my surprise, that was exactly where the treasure was revealed to be a minute later! And that was when this show clicked for me: it´s a showcase for the most entertaining elements of the secret-agent genre, with spies hunting spies, international intrigue, some action, and occasional humor.
The second episode takes on a spy vs. spy feeling. Jack and Rowe take on a terrorist organization called Hornet in a race to prevent Hornet from blowing up several political leaders. This episode was interesting to watch, even if it doesn´t help establish any kind of background for the series yet.
Episode three starts to provide some background detail. A princess in the royal family went missing at some point, so now there´s a nationwide hunt for the Fifteen Year Princess, so-called because she would be fifteen years old in the present. Jack and Rowe are ordered to escort Noel, a failed Fifteen Years Princess candidate, back to her home island. So far, this episode stands alone as the only hint that there may be a little more to "L/R" than just an "episode of the week" type plot. I suppose that Noel will be back in later episodes, as she is in the opening credits after all.
The final episode showed off the more humorous side of the show, as several secret agent teams, including Jack and Rowe, race to the center of some ruins to claim the prize. The various teams are an odd mix, including a drag queen with two bunny girls, two septuagenarians, and a team I can only describe as the Coy and Vance to Jack and Rowe´s Bo and Luke (that´s a "Dukes of Hazard reference, for the uncool).
