Ultraviolet

This is one of the series I can watch again and again. I love it more and more every time I watch it. It's dark, moody atmosphere pulls you in from the very beginning, and keeps you glued to your seat for the full series.

All six episodes are integral to six hour story line in which Mike Colefield (Jack Davenport) struggles to come to terms with what happened to his friend Jack Beresford (Stephen Moyer), and to choose sides in Humanity's war against Vampires which is nearing it's climax. It will keep you guessing as to who's good, and who's bad until the very end.

I have to say that the series is a bit subtle for a mini-series. There are countless small details that can be overlooked during the first (Or even second in my case ;) Some of the plot elements aren't explained very well either. While this gives the series a "smart" feel to it, it makes it harder to understand.

As I said before I thoroughly enjoyed this series, and I'll pounce on a second season if there ever is one.

This mini-series was a breath of fresh air. I was quite surprised to find it at my local Blockbuster video, which is renound for carrying a lot of copies of main-stream garbage. This series introduced unusual elements and had all of the signatures of a well-created 'universe.'

This is a must-see, esp. for Vampire (did I use the 'v'-word?) fans.

You might want to sit down. Ultraviolet is stylish, smart and dare I say it - British…

British science fiction has a bad reputation with the people who commission programmes for television. It has often been lumped in with children's programming, or consigned to a minority channel with a minimal budget. With no chance of filming spectacle, the writers fell back on plotting and characterisation, it may have looked cheap and nasty, but the glory always lay in the writing. However, up against an endless supply of glossy, vacuous American imports British SF was an endangered species.

Fortunately, Channel 4 were willing to take a risk when they commissioned Ultraviolet. They chose to make a series that subverted the staple police drama with vampires.

Mention vampires to people and they may think of Christopher Lee in a cloak, a Californian teenage girl's extracurricular activities or the foppish dandies of Anne Rice's novels, but the legends go back into the depths of mythology. The vampire mythos has been in and out of fashion for the last couple of centuries. It was popular in the Victorian era in a society coloured by the grim world of the newly industrialised cities, infant mortality and mass illnesses. It languished for most of the last century, only to come out of the shadows with the onset of AIDS and worries for the environment.

Ultraviolet takes the mythical vampire and gives it a twist. This is a world recognisably our own, but with a dark core. These vampires live in the shadows – not only the physical darkness of night, but they are also lurking in the gloomier parts of society. They have interests in cancer, AIDS and the outcasts of society. They manipulate society to their own ends through human servants – willing and otherwise.

The Catholic Church – in connivance with the British government has set up a team to investigate suspicious events and where necessary to destroy the vampires. This is a long way from Buffy's stakes and a spell in the library. This team comes equipped with SWAT commandos, guns, grenades and all the latest scientific equipment.

Jack Davenport plays a policeman who falls into this alternate world when one of his colleagues goes missing.

The episodes do feature an ongoing thread which reaches a conclusion in the final episode. However, most of the plot of each episode is self-contained, so even if you chance across an odd episode you will be able to pick up the story. Ultraviolet is not suitable for children as it contains discussion of such topics as paedophilia and abortion –both subjects are sensitively handled, but are bound to offend some people.

The makers chose to use actors that could do justice to the material. If you tuned in halfway through an episode without realising what you were watching you could easily believe it was a glossy detective drama. Dialogue is well handled and understated – they act and sound like government officials, not bit players in a Hammer Horror film.

Visually it looks superb, it was shot on film and the screen glows with cool colours not normally seen outside of big budget productions. The producers took advantage of the London scenery, daytime scenes are set in the leafy suburbs, whilst night shots feature the seedier side of the metropolis – amusement arcades, grim tube stations and lonely streets. Special effects are used sparingly and are competently handled to propel the story forward.

Six hour long episodes were made. Part of me would like to see more of this dark world, to see the development of the grand plot and the characters, but another part says that it would have been impossible to maintain the standard without repeating some of the plot lines.

A minor classic.

I recant, I repent, I withdraw my previous reserved review. At the time when I first reviewed Ultraviolet (which was some time after I'd actually watched it), Buffy and Angel were at their peak, and slick, quippy vampires were all the rage. But that's been taken as far as it can be. Tiring of the superficiality of the Buffyverse, I decided to give Ultraviolet another try.

Oh my. Oh MY. It's far better than I remember. Yes, the characters are miserable, but it's clearly laid out why this is so, and it all adds to the sense that this is *serious*, and that there are no quick fixes. There are nuances to the character development that I'd missed last time (I recall being distracted and only seeing half of the episodes when I first watched it), and I really, truly felt for them as people (it doesn't hurt that Susannah Harker looks like a melancholy angel, of course). It's underplayed perfectly, with only the occasionally shoddy piece of score to cheapen the tone.

And most of all, I felt for the vampires. These aren't the disposable charicatures of the Buffyverse, and they surpass even the fleshed out characters of Near Dark. They are real, rational people, with real emotions and familiar and touching desires and goals. They just happen to be immortal and drink blood. After you've seen vampires done this way, it makes you question why it should ever be otherwise. Ultraviolet tackles the question "If I was me, but a vampire, what would I do, what would I *actually* be like?" without flinching, trivialising, or slipping up.

There are no tomes of ancient wisdom, no easy answers, and most of all, no black and white morality. Ultraviolet poses the question: if you're always offered the choice to become a vampire, and if you don't have to kill to feed, then where is the crime? Why is it *wrong* to be a vampire? Just because the Church says so?

Ultraviolet leaves the viewer to make up his or her own mind about who the bad guys actually are, and whether there are any good guys in this scenario. It's an interesting and respectful take on the genre.

The word vampire might encourage the odd yawn from prospective viewers of any fantasy series these days, but fortunately Ultraviolet never uses the word and so we can enjoy it for what it is. My own feeling while watching this excellent series was that it was first and foremost a quality drama series. It has depth, it is thought-provoking, it is gripping and brilliantly conceived. The vampire element, referred to as leeches or Code 5 in the serial, are bound to present-day earth by such topical considerations as biological warfare, AIDS, abortion and other key social issues which, far from being boring or rammed down our throats, serve as a convincing backdrop to what is essentially a battle between authorities and the church, and the parasitic underground of late twentieth century society. The supernatural element, in fact, blends so superbly with the natural that if any viewer were to chance across this series in midstream they would find themselves wondering exactly what they were watching. Six episodes scarcely seems enough to satisfy, but on the other hand, the entire adventure is wrapped up so neatly that, unless some equally clever ideas are forthcoming, this mini-classic should be laid to rest. A high quality cast, scripts and an atmosphere to rival the best of the X Files, all rooted in darkly convincing reality, Ultraviolet is a powerful combination of supernatural thriller and drama with biting social comment. This is so good it hardly seems like fantasy at all. The future of British SF should look to Ultraviolet as its mentor.